Miraculous Gems
by Sapphire's Ink
Summary: Reversals have strange effects on people. Literally all the miraculous users ever. Lukadrigaminette endgame.
1. Introduction

**Hello. If you've found this story, it means you've likely fallen down a rabbit hole and are reading this on your phone as you speed down the hole to Wonderland because you literally have nothing else to do.**

 **Also, I don't own Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir (and yes, I will be spelling it that way).**

 **That out of the way, welcome to this rewrite of the series Miraculous Ladybug. Enjoy!**

 **PS: I will be reversing the love square (Marichat instead of Ladrien). If you don't like it, leave. I don't blame you if it turns you off right away.**

"Since the beginning of time, there have been thirty-seven Miraculous jewels, one set of five for each continent. However, there have always been two of these Miraculous jewels that have been prized and sought after more than all of the others: the earrings of the ladybug which provides the power of creation, and the ring of the black cat which provides the power of destruction. It is said that if one person were to possess these two miraculous jewels at the same time, they would achieve absolute power."

An unspecified male closet a purple locket, hiding the sweet smiling face of his missing wife, gently rubbing the top, appreciating the smoothness of the locket jewel. "I want that absolute power, Nooroo."

Nooroo started. "But master, no one knows where these Miraculous are!"

The man growled, stomping his foot. "I want that absolute power!" he growled.

Nooroo bowed his head in submission. "Yes, Master."

The man smirked. "Your miraculous, remind me of its powers again?"

"The Moth brooch allows you to give powers to any given person, making them your devoted follower." Nooroo answered.

The man ran his fingers gently over the top of the purple jewel again. "And when it comes to luring superheroes, what could be better than creating supervillains?"

Nooroo immediately understood where his holder was going with this. "But master, the miraculous jewels are not meant to be mistreated like this!"

The man growled again, stomping his foot harder, scaring the white moths into flying in the air again. "I need that absolute power, Nooroo! I must bring my Tara back to me!"

Knowing that he would not be able to dispute against his holder should he force him to do this, and that there would be no changing his mind, Nooroo simply bowed his head in frightened submission, with a dutiful "Yes, master." to complete the act.

The unspecified male pinned the violet Moth brooch to his shirt, commanding with a loud voice: "Nooroo, _dark wings rise_!"

Moths from all around the room followed the command and surrounded the male's entire body.

Nooroo was sucked into his miraculous jewel.

The man lifted his eyes to the light, allowing his cane to fall to the ground with a soft clatter when it came into contact with the pristine marble floor. "From this day forth, I shall be known as Hawkmoth."

The window covered itself with a dutiful whir as Hawkmoth laughed in a stereotypical evil laugh.

* * *

Wayzz awoke from inside his matchbox with a start.

 _Nooroo?_

"Master, Master!" Wayzz cried, floating dangerously close to his Master, completely forgetting the fact that Fu was currently with a patient.

"Hmm? What?" the man asked, turning to look back up at his chiropractor.

"Uh, it's all part of the treatment." Fu stuttered. "Master, Master~"

It was less than five minutes later that Fu shoved his patient out of the door with a dutiful "See you next week!" despite the man's protests.

"What was it you needed, Wayzz?" Fu asked his kwami.

"I sensed the Moth miraculous, master." Wayzz answered.

"Nooroo?" Fu asked, shocked. "I thought the Moth miraculous had been lost forever."

"But, it is a negative aura, Master." Wayzz continued. "I fear someone is mistreating Nooroo's miraculous jewel."

"Then we will need to put a stop to this before it gets out of hand." Fu declared. He began moving his body in complicated motions, attempting to initiate a transformation-

-but Fu threw his back out in the process.

"Master, be reasonable." Wayzz attempted to stop the elderly man's attempts to transform again. "You are not as young as you used to be."

"Still young." Fu argued. "I'm only one-hundred-eighty-six." Fu got to his feet. "But you're right, I can't do this alone anymore."

Fu tapped a specific pattern on the megaphone, which moved to reveal a black box accented with red. Fu lifted the lid to reveal four miraculous jewels lying peacefully in the box: the honey bee, the fox, the ladybug, and the black cat.

Fu gently put the Ladybug earrings in a similarly patterned box as the one from whence it had just come, and the black cat ring in an identical box as the earring container, then put them both in his bag and left.

* * *

"Marinette, your alarm's been going off for fifteen minutes, you're going to be late for school!" Sabine Cheng shouted up to her daughter.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng lifted her comforter off her head, revealing tired eyes. Marinette managed a breathy "Coming, mom" before groaning and pulling the covers back over her head.

* * *

Adrien Agreste tied the white laces on his orange shoes and picked up his bag. Over the past few months, he had been secretly registering himself at a school called College Francoise-Dupont, where he planned to attend school. He was fed up of constantly being stuck at home without anyone to talk to save the adults looking after him (he didn't count his brother, cause he wasn't always behaved the best). So, he left his home and hurried to the school to attend class, completely against his father's orders.

* * *

Adrien arrived at the school in high spirits. _Finally_ , he wouldn't be alone.

Just a few steps away from the school's doors, Natalie and his bodyguard drove up. "Adrien," Natalie called, "please don't do this, you know what your father wants!"

Adrien sighed. "I don't want to keep being shut up at home! I want to meet people and actually interact with people my own age who aren't models or the ultra-rich and famous."

Natalie sighed. "Adrien..."

Adrien's eyes caught sight of a man with a red and white floral patterned shirt, lying down on the ground, reaching for a cane. Adrien went running to help the man up, handing him back his cane. "Are you alright? Do you need to see someone?"

The man sighed. "No, I'm just fine, thank you."

Adrien smiled and turned back to his supervisors, only to see them looking mad at him, blocking his entrance to the school.

Fu slipped a small box into Adrien's bag.

Adrien walked over to Natalie and his bodyguard. "I just want to go to school. Please don't tell father."

Natalie led the blond back into the limousine, which took off down the road.

Fu continued down the street, finished with his first Jewel test.

* * *

Marinette burst out of her parents' bakery with a box of cookies to give to her classmates, only to stop short when a red car nearly ran her over. Everyone on either side of the street was looking at their phones as a man in a red and white shirt slowly crossed the street with a cane.

A car was coming straight for the man with the cane.

Without spending more than one-tenth of a second thinking about it, Marinette darted forth and saved the man from being hit by the car, in the process spilling half her box of cookies her parents had given to her for her class.

Marinette groaned. Her knees ached, but that and the cookies were a very small price to pay for the life of this old man.

"Thank you. I'm sorry about your cookies." Fu spoke as he stood up on his own.

"Of course." Marinette groaned, picking up the (now-abused) box of cookies. Half of the green cookies had fallen out and were already being trampled underfoot by the passing pedestrians. "Just my luck."

Marinette straightened. "Do you want a cookie?"

"That would be nice, but I have nothing to give you in return." the elderly man spoke in response.

Marinette smiled. "That's alright, just take one."

Fu took one of the cookies from the box, taking advantage of the fact that Marinette was distracted by the cookie-taking that she didn't notice the slight increase in weight in her purse with the earring box. Fu took a bite, closing her purse with a content hum. "Delicious." the man noted with appreciation.

Marinette smiled warmly. The school bell rang, and the girl's attention was immediately drawn back to the building. "Oh, no, I'm gonna be late!"

Fu watched with mild amusement as the new ladybug holder dashed into the school as fast as she could while simultaneously making sure she didn't drop any more cookies.

She and the new black cat holder would make a nice pair of partners.

* * *

"Nino, why don't you sit in the front row this year?" Mme Bustier's voice called out gently, with an undertone of being commanding. Nino's grades had slipped from being the impeccable marks they had been last year from beginning to end, and his parents wanted to make sure he wasn't goofing off in class. To be frank, Mme Bustier wanted to keep the boy exactly where she could keep an eye on him.

The teenage boy grumbled and shuffled to the front row, taking the farthest left-hand corner, incidentally the closest seat to the door.

As such, he had full view of when Marinette stumbled in, dropping at least a third of the (until now) still preserved cookies. Marinette groaned, her pigtails drooping. The girl took notice of the strange fact that Nino was sitting in the front row, shrugged, and sat in her normal seat for the past four years, her heavy pink backpack resting peacefully beside her.

"Marinette Dupain-Cheng." the school bully, Chloe Bourgeois, addressed the girl.

Marinette sighed, exasperated. Here we go again.

What the pink-clad girl never expected the bully to say to her was: "That's my seat."

Marinette faced her. "Chloe, this has always been my seat."

"Well, now it isn't." Chloe replied, trying to pry Marinette away from the seat she had dubbed her own, if not for the brunette already sitting there.

"You're welcome to a cookie, but I will _not_ move. Find another spot." Marinette spoke, gesturing to the box half-filled with green pistachio-flavored cookies from her parents' shared bakery.

Chloe snarled. "Who are you to speak to me like that?"

"The rightful owner of this spot," Marinette deadpanned. "as I was here first. Get lost."

Chloe groaned. "RIDICULOUS, UTTERLY RIDICULOUS!"

A dark-skinned girl with obvious dyed hair approached Marinette, chuckling. "If you get any more defensive about that seat, you'd be Sheldon!"

Marinette was confused. "Sheldon who?"

"Sheldon Cooper!" The girl gasped in mock offense. "Are you telling me you've never seen the Big Bang Theory?"

Marinette tilted her head. "The big bang theory? Isn't that a scientific thing on how the universe was created? I don't really take Religion class anymore, or theoretical aspects of Science."

"OH MY GOD, YOU'VE NEVER SEEN THE BIG BANG THEORY!" the girl cried furiously. She stuck her hand out. "My name is Alya, and you need to get out more."

Marinette reached into her box and brought out the last two cookies. "Marinette." she spoke, offering her one of the two cookies.

Alya plopped down in the seat next to her, accepting the offered cookie. "Nice to meet you."

Both of them ate the cookies with a smile.

* * *

Felix Agreste opened the door to the fridge, opened a fresh carton of milk, and chugged the liquid inside, leaving absolutely none for his twin brother sitting at the table.

"Hey-"

"Hay is for horses." Felix interrupted. He belched, wiping his mouth. "You were saying?"

Adrien crossed his arms, childishly pouting. "Aren't you supposed to get a glass for that?"

"Too much work." Felix shrugged. "Plus, it's mine now." the blue-eyed blond took another swig from his - now personal - carton of milk.

Adrien sighed. "This is why I always have to eat my cornflakes dry?"

"ABSOLUTELY!" Felix hammed with a shit-eating grin.

Adrien groaned, rising to his feet. He would settle for orange juice, at least until Natalie bought some more milk. Second time would be the charm. He was going to try and enlist again at school.

Being alone was unbearable, and his brother was an asshole.

* * *

Kim furiously scribbled a note on a scrap of paper, then passed the note to the gentle (when not provoked) giant directly next to him across the aisle.

Ivan quickly read he note, then scrunched it up. _Don't get in trouble on the first day, don't get in trouble on the first day, **don't** get in trouble on the **first day**..._

Ivan closed his eyes in an attempt to regain his bearings.

When he looked back over at Kim, he saw that the hoodie-clad teen was passing him another note.

Against his better judgement, Ivan accepted and read the second note.

It was worse than the first.

Ivan repeated the familiar mantra in his head. It helped him calm down.

 _Don't get in trouble, don't get in trouble, don't get in trouble..._

Ivan tossed the crunched-up note behind him.

Despite his better judgement, he accepted a third note from Kim.

'Maybe if you had the guts to tell her how you feel, maybe she would actually notice you.'

Now, for all intents and purposes, Kim was not a totally inherently mean person, just incredibly blunt, shortsighted (metaphorically, not physically), and annoying.

Ivan actually accepted this as good advice.

Until Kim passed him a fourth note.

'Doofus.'

Now, Ivan really didn't like getting in trouble. It really wasn't his fault. It _truly_ wasn't, really!

Mme Bustier caught Kim handing Ivan the fifth note.

"Misters Bruel and LeChien, just what do you think you're doing?" the redhead cried furiously.

Like the paper had burned them, the two boys dropped the scrap Kim had written on again.

Mme Bustier came up to Ivan and Kim, picked up the note, and read the contents.

"'Just confess.' Which one of you two wrote this?" Bustier waved the scrap of paper around in the air.

"It was Kim." Max spoke. "Ivan never did anything but accept the notes."

Bustier growled. "Both of you go to the principal's office." Quieter, she spoke, "On the first day, no less, I'll probably be giving out tests and people'll be giving me tardy notes within a few hours."

Kim slung his bag over his shoulder, and Ivan quickly followed with the scrunched-up notes all clenched in one fist.

* * *

Adrien plucked his schoolbag off the floor where he had thrown it. While rearranging the contents of his school books, he found a small black jewelry box. Adrien immediately frowned. "Felix, did you stick this in my bag?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Felix called sleepily from his spot in his hammock across the room, then drifted back off to dreamland.

Adrien opened the box, confused. A green orb of light materialized in midair. When it faded, a strange black cat creature with green eyes and no pupils seemed to wake up.

It yawned. "Hey, got anything to eat in here?" It (maybe he?) spoke loudly.

"Hey, be quiet! You're gonna wake my brother!" Adrien hissed.

"Oh, cool! Can I meet him?" The strange talking creature exclaimed happily.

" _Adrie~en!_ " Felix groaned, annoyed, from the other side of the room. "What's going _o~on_?"

"Nothing, Felix, go back to sleep!" Adrien attempted.

Too late. The creature flew ( _flew_!) over to Felix and poked his nose. "BOOP!"

Felix opened his eyes, staring cross-eyed at the strange black cat on his face. "Adrien, when the hell did we get this bug-mouse-cat thing?"

Adrien was still trying to figure out what it was. "Are... You the genie in the bottle or something?"

The creature groaned in disgust. "Seriously? Why does everyone insist on comparing me to _him_?" it spat. "I'm much better than that bozo. Name's Plagg, nice to meet'cha." 'Plagg' held out his hand for each of the twins to shake one.

Adrien walked over to Plagg, took one of his hands, and shook it. Felix was still hesitant about it.

Felix snapped. "Could you get off of me?!"

"No, thanks! I like squishy people!" Plagg replied.

Felix immediately sat up, sending Plagg flying across the room.

"WHAT WAS THAT FOR?!" Plagg demanded furiously.

"You were poking at my face, pokey." Felix replied, getting off of his hammock, pouting. The excess fabric from his pajama pants layered around his feet and the waistband fell several inches away from being dangerously short, quite typical for a pair three sixes too large (Felix liked being able to breathe in his clothes, except in public).

"Come off it, Felix." Adrien spoke.

"Anyways, where did you get a talking flying cat anyways, and why did you name it 'Plagg'?" Felix crossed his arms. "You're so weird."

Adrien turned the other way, looking back at the red and black box. "I don't know! I just opened a box and out came this weird... thing!"

"I'M NOT A THING!" Plagg protested vehemently. "I'm a KWAMI! K-W-A-M-I! KWAMI!"

"A _what_?" the two twins echoed in unison.

Plagg sighed. This was gonna take a while.

* * *

Ivan and Kim sat with their bags in front of Principal Damocles in his office, waiting for the impending punishment.

"Sorry about all those notes." Kim apologized. "Really, you should confess, though. I'm getting tired of watching you beat around the bush with her."

This only made this worse (completely unintentionally).

 _Don't get mad, Ivan, don't get mad, he's only trying to help, **please** don't get mad..._

"Yeah, you're right." Ivan spoke. "I just don't know how to tell her."

Kim hummed. "I get that. I don't know how to tell my crush, either."

Ivan calmed considerably after this. At least Kim knew what he was going through. Knowing him, Kim probably just wanted to see how it was done so he could repeat the same thing on his crush, thinking it to be a success or a fail, depending on the circumstance. If it was a fail, though, Kim could do the opposite. That way, at least one of them would be happy.

Ivan patted Kim on the shoulder. "Thanks for talking with me. It helped."

"Yeah, man. You're welcome." Kim responded.

* * *

Hawkmoth sat in his room all alone, twiddling his thumbs and toes. He wanted to create a super-villain!

...

but no one was angry enough for him to feel the vibrations of their negative emotions.

It was so frustrating!

Hawkmoth continued repeatedly scanning the area of Paris waiting for Ladybug and Chat Noir, but before that, a supervillain to create. After all, Akumae were created specifically for the reason of obtaining the Miraculous gems.

Hawkmoth was frustrated when he came up with absolutely nothing each time. Everyone was so sickeningly happy.

He would try again later tonight.

* * *

Felix messed around with Adrien's smartphone in an attempt to mess up his brother's strictly organised storage while Plagg explained what it meant to be a Miraculous holder to Adrien. Felix was also listening in, in case there was the case that he needed to take the Miraculous gem from him and perform his duties for a while as Chat Noir.

Adrien eyed the strange ring. It was just big enough for his middle finger, too large or too small for any of the others. There was an abnormal space between the ring, splitting it down the middle where it was obviously supposed to face upwards. The slit was wavy, looking almost like a river in a child's drawing or painting. The color was silver. On the inside was engraved a black paw print, mostly faded, like it had been been there for decades upon decades upon decades without being retraced.

Adrien slid the ring onto his middle finger, appreciating the cool metal now surrounding his finger.

"A girl will probably get Tikki's miraculous. It's normally that way, since the ladybug miraculous is a pair of earrings, and mine normally goes to a man because our two miraculous gems represent balance." Plagg continued. "Don't be surprised if you meet a girl in a red black-spotted suit with a yo-yo sometime within the next few days. Fu might take longer with the jewel test than normal, it's happened. In fact, both holders are normally found within, at the minimum, a day."

"The most time? How long was the maximum amount of time?" Felix asked, still playing with Adrien's phone.

"Like, maybe six months? Fu doesn't really want to make mistakes, and neither did any of the previous guardians. They want us to have a strong bond, and a soul bond is normally the strongest, which is why we try to find soulmates instead of anything else that could cause complications."

"S-soulmates?!" Adrien stuttered.

"Ooh, when's the wedding?" Felix teased his brother, who turned cherry-red. Felix cackled.

"Yup." Plagg said, ignoring Felix. "Soul bonds are the strongest. It limits the chance that you two'll turn against one another."

This... actually made a lot of sense.

Plagg jolted. Tikki woke up.

"Well, it's never happened that fast before."

* * *

Marinette screeched, staring at Tikki. "IT'S A BUG! A... A MOUSE! A BUG-MOUSE?!"

Tikki dodged all of the objects Marinette threw in her direction.

"You're a rather strange person, aren't you, Marinette?"

''GAH! Bug-mouse talks!'' Marinette paused, holding her biology textbook above her head. "How do you know my name?"

"Because I'm a Kwami!" Tikki answered like it actually answered her question.

Instead, it made the tenth-grader even more confused.

* * *

Plagg shook his head. "It's alright. Well, kid, let's do this!"

"CLAWS OUT!"

* * *

Ladybug stood confused in the middle of her room, staring at her reflection.

Her previous loop earrings (one red, the other black) had changed shape to give circle-shaped buds.

Strangely, her hair had also grown. It was once at her shoulders, but now reached past her butt. He torso and back were covered in red spandex, giving the impression of a bathing suit, but underneath the second layer was black spandex suit with tiny, almost unnoticeable, red flecks. Her hair covered where two rips stuck out through her suit, revealing Tinkerbell-type fairy wings.

"Tikki, why do I look like a cross between Natasha Romanov and Sailor Moon in a bathing suit? Can I have my real clothes back?"

"Marinette? Did you get home from school okay?" Sabine Cheng's voice drifted through her trapdoor.

Marinette jumped. "Yeah! I'm just gonna take a nap, okay?"

"Okay, sweetheart! Sweet dreams!" Sabine answered.

Marinette climbed up to the roof and opened the trapdoor leading to her balcony, exiting through the small entrance. She held her yo-yo in her right hand questioningly. "Alright, so I just throw it like this?" She flicked her wrist and the cord extended, latching onto the smokestack of a chimney three streets away. "Alright, that worked. Now I just tug back on it?" Marinette's other hand pulled back on her end of the cord. The yo-yo clicked and sent the girl flying Spiderman-style.

* * *

Adrien, now clad in black leather, stared approvingly at his hands, which now had claw-like metal points on the fingertips.

Felix giggled behind him. "You look like a _girl_!"

Adrien huffed. "So do you! I mean, you wear skirts half the time!"

"THEY'RE KILTS!" Felix retorted. "AND I DON'T WEAR THEM IN PUBLIC!"

"Well, good for you, but I have to go crime-fighting in this getup now, so I'll see ya later. Leave the window unlocked!" Adrien promptly jumped out the window, and Felix promptly locked it.

* * *

Hawkmoth was even more annoyed than before.

WHY WASN'T ANYONE LOSING THEIR TEMPER!

*Dramatic growling*

* * *

Ivan and Kim left the principal's office (they had been kept in detention).

"See ya." Ivan waved goodbye to Kim.

"Later." Kim replied.

* * *

Adrien walked carefully on his magic extendable telephone-telescope-camera-tracking device metal staff. He didn't really want to fall off.

His plans were thwarted by a girl. His mind gave no indication to understand the situation, for she tackled him in midair.

Two meters from the ground, the girl's yo-yo string wrapped around them, while the yo-yo itself wrapped around the leather-clad teen's weird baton.

Adrien took a minute to assess his situation. He was currently pressed up against a red spandex-clad girl in midair.

Marinette smiled. "Hi! You must be my partner my kwami told me about. I am-" She tried to let them down, but both their heads conked together, then they fell onto the ground to add insult to injury. "-Madly clumsy. I am so, so clumsy."

"No sweat, Clumsy! I'm learning the ropes too, and once you get the hang of it, it's easy!" Adrien slowly climbed out of the yo-yo's tangled string and picked up his baton. "My name is Chat Noir. Yours?"

"Ladybug." The girl decided, detangling herself from her yo-yo string. "My name is Ladybug."

Chat wrinkled his nose. "You do know a ladybug technically isn't a bug, right? It's a beetle."

"Too bad, that's what I'm calling myself!"

"As you wish, Bugaboo." Chat Noir bowed at a seemingly perfect 90-degree angle.

Ladybug blushed.

It suddenly began raining. Deep storm clouds gathered over their heads and a deafening clap of thunder was heard.

Chat Noir growled. He wondered why. He really loved the rain.

Wait... Cats don't.

"DAMN FELINE INSTINCTS!" Chat Noir shouted at the sky.

Ladybug looked at him questioningly with one eyebrow raised. "We should go to our homes. I'll see you tomorrow."

Chat Noir hummed. "Alright. Bye, Ladybug."

Ladybug giggled as she took off into the rainstorm, entirely going the other way to get to her own house compared to the Agreste estate. The yo-yo was used once again.

Chat Noir turned and ran towards his father's mansion.

Ladybug ran towards her parents' bakery.

* * *

Marinette shoveled spoonfuls of soup into her mouth and set a plate of cookies down for Tikki to eat (she had requested them herself).

Green eyes kept bothering her. She couldn't get the strange pupils pattern out of her head. The pair of eyes were beautiful.

Marinette got out her sketchbook and drew a rough sketch of Chat Noir, from what she remembered about him. She took care with her drawing of her superhero partner, especially his eyes, the part about him she remembered most. She made little notes referring to his costume, such as 'black leather', 'golden bell', 'cross-stitch', 'double-layering', 'paw pads', 'warmth receptors', 'staff holster', 'hints of dark green'. Along the drawing of his tail, she wrote: 'pain receptor - connected to spinal cord?'.

On a separate page, she drew his eyes as specifically as she could, including accurate colors.

Tikki peeked from over Marinette's shoulder at the drawing and gasped. "I think that my child has a crush on Plagg's child!"

Blood rushed to Marinette's cheeks, sending heat blossoming over her cheeks. "Wh-what?"

Tikki hummed. "Couldn't help but notice how specific Chat Noir's eyes were drawn in your book, there."

If Marinette wasn't red before, she most certainly was now.

* * *

Chat Noir was outside, banging on the window to his room. His brother had locked the window, the jerk.

"Felix, come on, let me in!"

"You know that whenever you tell me to do something, I don't do it." Felix continued tapping on his joy-con and tongue sticking out of his mouth, attempting to get his video game character to survive for longer amount of time. "And remember, if you say I could give less of a shit about my twin brother being stuck outside and gripping the window frame, you're 'englishing' wrong."

"STOP IMITATING JACOB!" Chat bellowed from outside. "UNLOCK THE DAMNED WINDOW!"

Felix put on noise-cancelling earphones and continued playing his game, ignoring his brother's furious screeching.

* * *

Marinette continued altering her picture of Chat Noir's eyes, a beautiful acid-green, black slits down the middle of the green orbs, a lighter green outside of the pupils replacing the sclera's white. The mask surrounding his face got rid of many personal aspects of his features, so instead of the peach lightly colored skin on the rest of his face, she surrounded the drawing of the pair of eyes with a black mask.

Satisfied with her work, she yawned and slipped back under the covers to go to sleep-

-until she remembered she actually had homework to do.

Oh, no. Maybe Tikki would help?

* * *

Plagg curled up on Adrien's stomach to sleep peacefully. He'd always slept more peacefully on squishy people.

Felix snored from the other side of the room.

Adrien snorted and rolled over, sending Plagg softly falling on the side of the bed.

Plagg abruptly woke when an Akuma popped up, his internal senses rigged to go off when Nooroo's holder created one of their vessels.

Plagg groaned and went back to sleep. He would bother his holder later.

* * *

Tikki desperately tried to wake Marinette. "Marinette, Marinette, Marinette, get up, get up!" Tikki groaned, trying to wake her holder.

Marinette simply groaned and rolled over, her hoop earrings softly shifting on her ear. Still, Tikki tried to wake her holder. Finally, she succeeded. "Tikki, what's going _o~on_?"

"There's an Akuma on the loose! You need to protect Paris!"

Marinette groaned. "It's the middle of the morning! Can this wait?"

Tikki scowled. "Marinette..."

Marinette groaned. "Fine. Tikki, spots on!"

* * *

Adrien was woken up by an explosion, hand softly curled around his sleeping Kwami. Plagg was also woken up (Felix was up reading a book in the dead of night) with a groan. "Seriously, I just fell asleep!" Plagg groaned.

Felix set aside his reading glasses and put down his half-finished novel and walked over to the window, watching the light show of fire and sparks. It stood out in stark contrast to the dark night sky, in which steadily rose excess smoke.

"We need to stop Furnace Flare." Plagg spoke, turning to Adrien. "Transform yourself. We need to help."

Adrien turned to Felix. "Are you-"

"I'll be fine, idiot." Felix punched his brother's arm in a playful manner. "Those people out there need you more. Go join the improperly named Ladybug."

Adrien smiled. "Stay safe, Felix, and seriously, leave the window unlocked."

Felix sighed. "Get going already!"

"Claws out!"

Felix locked the window and went to sleep.

* * *

Celia Convex was a cook at the Grand Paris hotel, her specialty being cakes and pastries. She was fed up with making pastries uniquely for Chloe Bourgeois, and the mayor making her, the cook, pay for making the elegant pastries and cakes with his ingredients, ovens, and time that could be spent making other things for the customers. While the pay at the hotel was magnificent, it was not enough to balance the compensation her employer demanded after making black forest cherry cakes his daughter ordered without his knowledge, leaving Celia to pick at the leftover scraps of money

Finally, when Celia burned her hands making a tray of elegant pumpkin cookies (Pumpkins weren't even in season quite yet, and so cost very much money) for Chloe and her only friend, and her employer had caught her bandaging her hands after making the pumpkin cookies (the pumpkins apparently cost more than 200$ each, and Celia had made the cookies out of only one, but it would take her entire month's pay to get rid of her debt for the pumpkin cookies), and had been exceptionally mad, even compared to everything else she had done in the past for his daughter without his knowledge. _Of course_ , Celia had told Andre Bourgeois who she was doing this all for, but Andre believed his daughter, and Chloe never lost her shapely figure as a result of constantly swimming in the hotel's pool.

Celia snapped and lost her temper towards her employer, and he yelled back. Everyone was so shocked and scared to see the head pastry chef descend into an all-out screaming match with the owner of the hotel, especially when Celia lost more control by the second.

Everyone had been confused when a black and purple butterfly flew through the swinging double-doors to the kitchen and landed on Celia's bandages, which made the bandages grow purple, and everything, to Celia, faded to black. All that was left was a man's voice in her head.

"Furnace Flare, my name is Hawkmoth. I will give you the elemental affinity for fire in return for the miraculous gems of Ladybug and Chat Noir. Are we in agreement?"

Celia smirked evilly, a glowing purple mask in the shape of a butterfly taunting her and scaring the others in the room. "Yes, Hawkmoth." Furnace Flare answered Hawkmoth, confusing everyone. However, purple smoke covered Flare's body. When if faded a few seconds later, Furnace Flare, a woman with fire for hair, a dress looking like lava, a visible pair of leggings looking like solid rock at the precipice of a volcano, flaming shoes, and completely purple eyes (no pupils visible) stood where Celia had been a few seconds ago.

The only thing relatively the same were the bandages, now patterned with swirly purple flames, completely wrapped around her hands as if she were a mummy from the wrist down.

Furnace Flare realized everyone previously in the kitchen had escaped, and going by the sounds of sirens outside, someone had called the police.

Furnace Flare smirked. Fire lit her hands and she walked out of the room, leaving smoking black craters in the place of her feet. "Let's let the flames begin."

* * *

Paris immediately became three times as warm as it was before when Furnace Flare appeared. Fire spread like a plague in the city, easily burning houses. Thankfully, no one was hurt, for a loud city-wide alert summoned by Ladybug's Lucky Charm woke everyone up, and everyone wisely stayed out of the line of fire (if you'll pardon the pun).

Ladybug and Chat Noir's suits were cooling their bodies and allowing them to dramatically walk through the flames to find the first Akuma victim.

When they finally found the akumatized woman, she was still burning everything in sight, making fire demons out of the civilians on the street. She most certainly had plenty to choose from.

Ladybug growled. "My hands have been burned hundreds of time, and I've never gotten this bitchy about it." The female commented.

Chat shrugged. "Burn scars hurt. I've been known to be an asshole for months when I get a broken bone."

Ladybug crossed her arms. "You still don't need to be akumatized for getting yourself burned."

"Maybe she'd been really careful in the past and did't burn herself on the stove before?" Chat took another step towards Furnace Flare.

Ladybug deflected the fire demons charging at them with a grunt, and tied all of the minions up with her yo-yo, carefully soaring through the flames to avoid burning herself.

Ladybug's earrings beeped in warning. "I only have four minutes left, Chat!"

Chat continued deflecting monsters with his baton. "Got it!"

Ladybug dived into the battlefield, yo-yo in hand, skillfully avoiding the fire demons. Judging on the few intact and not-burning things on her, she found one anomaly: her bandages. Completely intact, not burned or burning?

'That's the Akuma holder.' Tikki's voice echoed in her head. 'I realize this is a strange request, but will you do a Reversal with me?'

Time seemed to have stopped for the moment as Marinette considered Tikki's request. 'What's a reversal?'

'A reversal is when the Kwami takes control of the Holder's body.' Tikki responded. 'You will have absolutely no control of your actions during this time, but it will allow for my full power to surface. I have to warn you, though, that your physical appearance in real life would change, too. Your attitude would also be different, not to mention your physical strength.'

'Alright.' Marinette responded without hesitation.

Time restarted and Tikki surfaced. Her wings twitched. She suddenly stopped short, a ways away from Furnace Flare, when pink and black light enveloped her her body.

Plagg froze. Tikki was attempting a Reversal? So soon? Plagg shook his head. If anyone could complete a successful Reversal on the second transformation, it would be Tikki. Plagg and his Holder kept fighting the Akuma's lackeys.

In Ladybug's place stood Tikki. She became faster, only a pink blur, and quickly tore the bandages using her yo-yo. Tikki landed and used her yo-yo to capture the Akuma, bidding goodbye to the purified moth.

Tikki smiled and released her Miraculous Ladybug charm and watched as all of the damage was repaired. This done, Tikki approached Chat Noir, who had put away his baton. Tikki got too far up in his personal space for his liking, but relaxed when she simply opened his left eye further and peered into it. " _I've always loved these eyes._ " Tikki said, smiling. Her thumb brushed across the bottom of his eyelid, making Chat close his eyelid so as to not let her hurt him.

Tikki hummed, and flapped her wings, then kissed the space between the cat ears replacing his human ones. " _Good night, Chat. Tell Plagg good night, too._ " Tikki bade, flying off towards her Holder's bakery.

Chat stood, shocked, until the press began to hound him, then he left towards the mansion.

Only to find the window locked. Again.

 _"FELIX!"_

* * *

Marinette, clad in Ladybug garb, stood frozen in a black abyss. Tikki finally released the hold on her, and Marinette detransformed. She wanted to see what Tikki meant by physical and psychic changes caused by the Reversal.

The first of many was her eyes. They had darkened a shade and turned slightly purple, a few shades away from being Tikki's royal blue eyes.

The second was her hair. Instead of her normal default blue hair, her hair was pitch-black, no highlights even when you held them against light and looking at it with a microscope.

Third, and most important, was her wings. They were still visible, completely solid. "Tikki, what am I supposed to do?"

Tikki stared at Marinette's wings. "Oh. I forgot that this might happen."

It took a few seconds to assimilate this. "You forgot? Are you insane? Everyone's gonna know I'm Ladybug!"

"Hey, I've only had to do a Reversal about fifty times, including this one! Miraculous holders are not normally up against one another, and each Reversal is different! It depends on the Holder's personality!" Tikki softened. "Having wings is normally something associated with Pollen's, Nooroo's and Duusu's Holders in the Balance Circle. Having wings on a Ladybug Reversal is very rare. Only five other of my Reversals have had wings."

Marinette calmed. She understood the tremendous compliment Tikki was giving her. Among all of the Ladybugs, she was one of the two Reversals Tikki had performed that had gotten wings. "Alright, I get what you're saying, but how am I going to hide them when I'm not Ladybug?"

Tikki sighed. "The last Reversal with wings always wore a white cloak, but that would stand out in today's time. I could ask Pollen what she does, because her Reversal's wings never show, but until then, you can hide them in your jacket, I think."

The sun was beginning to rise. School would start soon. Marinette sighed. "Look, Tikki, let's just get some sleep. I'm exhausted." The altered girl yawned.

Tikki agreed, and both immediately went to sleep. Marinette's alarm clock woke them up five minutes later. So much for Ladybug luck.

Marinette's wings twitched. She opened her eyes and shut off the alarm. She'd always hated that alarm.

Marinette groaned. She didn't want to be late to school, but the bed was so cozy and warm.

Tikki shared Marinette's point of view, but still nudged her out of bed _by her ear_ , then helped her get ready for school. Finally, the little Kwami hid in her signature pink purse (which Marinette slung around her right shoulder). Marinette took the brown bag filled with a salad, dressing, some cheese, an apple, and a croissant meant for her lunch to school, and quickly tucked some honey cookies into the bag for Tikki (Drizzled with honey, not cooked)(Marinette might not know all that much about the small Kwami, but she most certainly knew that her diet mostly consisted of sweets)(honey is the most natural sweetener, and it's used in most of the Dupain-Cheng pastries, which is part of why their boulangerie+patisserie is so popular: their sweets are quite good for health), then rushed off to school, wings twitching relentlessly in her jacket. She was suddenly really glad she didn't take PE this year.

When she arrived in her class, it didn't take long for her eyes to lock onto her seat. Chloe was sitting in it, Sabrina right next to her (though, Sabrina was struggling to keep in her seat, as Alya was frantically trying to pull Sabrina off the bench). A blonde-haired boy was sitting right in front of Chloe, and another next to Nathaniel behind Ivan.

Finally, in Chloe's seat from the previous day, there was a small spot of gum on the seat.

Marinette growled and looked back up at Chloe with a dangerous look in her eyes. "Did you do this?"

Chloe shivered under the dangerous look, but crossed her arms and responded eloquently as ever: "Sabrina did it. I just helped."

Marinette picked the gum off her seat, then flicked it towards the back of the class.

Thankfully, by chance, it landed in Chloe's hair (Marinette loved this newfound Ladybug luck. It was the best). Chloe's shrieks of 'MY HAIR MY HAIR MY HAIR' were halted when Mme. Bustier entered the class for homeroom before having class with the ninth grade. No amount of money or the fact that her father was the mayor of Paris would stop her from getting detention if she were called to the Principal.

Seeing new students, Mme Bustier took role call, seeing two new names on her list in short succession, and sharing the same family name.

"Agreste, Adrien?" Mme Bustier called out.

Adrien's eyes narrowed. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. A frantic look towards his desk buddy made Nino take pity on the blond. "You're supposed to say 'present'."

Adrien understood immediately. He abruptly stood, raised his hand, and announced: "PRESENT!"

The class got a little chuckle out of the cute faults of someone who was always homeschooled.

"Agreste, Felix?"

A more restrained boy looking exactly like Adrien (Felix would always insist he was taller) save for the eyes (emerald eyes are Adrien's, but stormy blue are Felix's) simply put his feet up on the desk and crossed his arms. "I'm here." Felix announced, eyes sliding shut.

Mme Bustier didn't appreciate rudeness, but accepted the answer. "Bourgeois, Chloe?"

"Present." Chloe responded, still trying to get the wad of gum out of her hair.

"Bruel, Ivan?" the redhead teacher called out, expecting to hear the customary 'cupcake' (Ivan loved to joke around about his hairstyle, and the little bit of humor always brightened everyone's spirits (save Chloe, but Ivan knew she was an asshole, so he didn't much care about her)), but was instead met with silence. "Bruel, Ivan?" Mme Bustier repeated. Silence met her again. "Class, does anyone know where Ivan went?"

Mylène raised her hand. "Ivan found me earlier when I was leaving the bathroom, and he started yelling at me. I think he thought he was singing, but I can't be sure."

Kim suddenly started banging his head on his desk. "Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot," Kim chanted for each time his face connected with the hard wood of his desk. Max took a hold of his red hoodie to stop him from causing permanent psychological damage. Kim's forehead was glowing red, and he was still chanting "Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot...".

Stoneheart, an Akuma made to be Ivan's representation of negativity, burst through the door. "CUPCAKE!" Stoneheart roared, then began walking through the class. Marinette decided it would be funnier if Ivan wasn't a Golem Akuma. "Mylène?"

Ivan picked up his crush in his hand. "Let go of me!" Mylène begged. Resistance was futile, however. "Why are you doing this?"

"So we can be together, forever!" Ivan responded.

Chloe was terrified, hiding under 'her' desk, calling her father. "Daddy," she begged, "there's another monster!"

Marinette growled. She was glad to have put the gum in that little asshole's hair. _No one_ called her friend a monster and got away with it.

However, she figured that since she was Ladybug, she needed to leave as soon as possible. Chloe deserved whatever Stoneheart gave her.

Marinette darted for the washrooms, but bumped into Adrien and Felix on the way. Marinette growled. Her wings begged to be released from captivity, and the brunette pushed past the twins to transform in the bathroom.

However, the bathroom wasn't empty, so Marinette left the bathroom and climbed up to the roof to ditch her jacket there and transform in the sky, out of anyone's view.

"SPOTS ON!"

* * *

Plagg still nibbled on his Camembert when Adrien let him take a breath of fresh air. "We need to go. Ladybug can't do this on her own."

"Wait till I finish my cheese."

Felix snatched the cheese away and squished it with his shoe. "You're done, now transform."

"Felix, that was rude." Adrien chided his brother.

"Maybe so, but at least you can transform now, and I can't possibly lock the window." Felix narrowed his eyes at the windows at the very top of the room.

Adrien ran a hand down his face. "CLAWS OUT!"

A few seconds later, fully transformed, Adrien turned to Felix. "Stay safe."

"I should be the one saying that to you." Felix crossed his arms.

Adrien smiled. His brother was wishing him good luck and telling him to stay safe. He knew his twin like no one else; this was Felix being affectionate.

Adrien, now Chat Noir, vaulted out of a window just big enough to let him through.

Felix hated not being able to lock it.

* * *

Chloe whined and complained all the way to the Eiffel tower, unfortunately getting in Alya's video. She desperately wanted footage for her new blog called Miraculous Gems. There were many different folders, one on Akuma victims and a complete profile on them, one for Fanfiction on the miraculous holders (mostly involving shipping between Ladybug and Chat Noir) and Akuma victims and their own civilian forms, and individual folders on Ladybug and Chat Noir. Not much was known about the Gem holders themselves yet, however. It basically included their genders, superhero names, and special power (Cataclysm, Lucky Charm). It also included a picture of each of them, and their abnormal weapons (a yo-yo and a baton, really?).

Another folder included videos Alya had taken of Akuma attacks (so far there was only one, but she had managed to get security footage from Furnace Flare at the Bourgeois hotel and other places Flare had managed to reach before being purified by the Reversal, which was also on the blog.

Another folder was reserved for fan art (Nathaniel had promised to add something to that folder as soon as the drawing was finished). Another folder included a private chat room.

It had taken half the night to figure out the coding for a blog as complicated as that.

Chloe was really started to get on her nerves. However, Alya would not stop the video for anything. Ladybug and Chat Noir would show up soon, for sure. That was worth a few complaints from the spoiled brat.

Sure enough, Ladybug flew over Stoneheart and blocked his way. Chat Noir vaulted over Stoneheart using his baton, shoving Cataclysm into the stony street. Deep cracks spread across the street, and Ladybug lit her hands with lightning-like strange liquid, and sent it into the street's cracks. The white liquid spread across all of the cataclysm'ed cracks in the street, and slowly repaired it, allowing Alya significant time for escaping to safety. Mylène and Chloe, however, were still held by the Akuma, who stood on indented white threads knitted together by lightning and a skilled seamstress.

"Woo-hoo!" Alya cheered. "Go, LB and CN!"

Ladybug growled, flying around Stoneheart to distract him from Alya. "Keep quiet, you idiot! You're drawing attention to yourself!"

Chat's baton tripped the Golem Akuma up, sending him crashing to the ground, stretching the seams. Ladybug luck kept them together. Ladybug's yo-yo wrapped around Chat's ankles as the stitches slowly buckled.

Stoneheart was annoyed. He needed to deliver his message. He tossed Ladybug and Chat Noir aside and continued on his way to the Eiffel tower.

Ladybug secured her hold on Chat (taking a second to adjust to Chat's added weight, and the fact that he was pressed flush against her body) and flew after Stoneheart.

* * *

Chat was set down on the ground when Plagg's voice whispered in his head. 'You need enhanced strength, and I'm more experience in these matters. Do a Reversal with me.'

The entire world faded to black, and he was suddenly in a bubble all on his own. He was no longer Chat Noir, but Adrien Agreste, talking to his Kwami. Plagg wasn't visible, but his presence was there, and it was warm and comforting. It was like being completely wrapped in a hug. Adrien considered Plagg's request. 'Not that I don't trust you,' Adrien was hesitant to say anything that might offend the Kwami, 'What is a Reversal?'

Ladybug watched as Chat's body covered with black smoke and wondered why that was happening. According to the security footage from the kitchens of Hotel Bourgeois, this is what Celia looked like when she was akumatized. A black sphere encompassed Chat's body, but Chat's form was clearly visible, and his ring was glowing neon green.

'This is Plagg's Reversal. Plagg and his Holder will switch forms, just like you and I did.' Tikki explained when Ladybug began panicking about Chat's health and whether she was going to have to fight her new partner. 'It'll be completely safe, and while Chat might suffer some changes in behavior and appearance, not much else will happen to him.'

Ladybug sighed, relieved. 'Alright. I need to focus on Stoneheart.'

Plagg emerged from the black sphere. Chat's skin darkened and his hair grew pitch-black, not to mention his eyes grew darker. Chat's tail was a true cat tail, not an addition to his belt, and his ears were no longer leather.

'Marinette. Please invoke a Reversal with me.' Tikki pleaded.

A pink ball of light surrounded Marinette. Without hesitation, Marinette responded immediately. 'I will invoke a Reversal, but I really need to learn how to do this on my own.'

'I'll offer a Reversal if you can't handle an Akuma. All you need to do is ask me. My true power is still restrained. You can't handle it, otherwise your additions in civilian form would be far too difficult to hide.'

'Alright.'

Marinette flew into the air, pink energy swirling around and around, until finally Marinette's wings closed. She was high enough that she could fall without anyone knowing her true identity. "REVERSAL!"

* * *

Tikki and Plagg stood at attention in front of the collection of dark butterflies, not at all surprised by the way Hawkmoth was speaking. Tikki took one step forwards, and Plagg followed his partner, hand clasped around hers. The two opposites' faces grew dark. " _ **Are you Nooroo's Child?**_ " they asked in unison.

Hawkmoth growled. "I am Holder to the Moth." he responded to their question.

Tikki shook her head, scoffing. " _This one knows you are the Holder. This is common knowledge._ "

" **The Holding of Nooroo was not these two's question. These two's question was: 'Are you Nooroo's Child?'**" Plagg continued.

Hawkmoth growled. "The question is not relevant. Gi-"

" _ **The question is relevant to these two. Answer, lest ye feel our wrath and eventually confiscate your gem.**_ "

The bystanders were shocked to see Tikki and Plagg address Hawkmoth in such a rude manner. However, considering he wanted to take them and make a wish, the question was not only relevant, but it was essential. If Hawkmoth was Nooroo's child, then Hawkmoth was simply trying to get their attention and make a good wish that Tikki could bless with luck. However, if Hawkmoth was only Nooroo's Holder, his intentions were not honorable, and Hawkmoth should not be allowed to make the wish upon their two gems in the first place.

"This Hawkmoth is not Nooroo's Child."

Oh, no. Nooroo didn't approve. This was a dishonorable man, giving Nooroo's miraculous a bad name and a bad reputation.

Instantly, Tikki and Plagg grew colder. Nooroo was being taken advantage of. Hawkmoth was dishonorable.

The last time this had happened, it had taken centuries of consoling before Nooroo felt comfortable with another Holder without another Kwami present. Now he had another abusive Holder? _Just his luck. Maybe Plagg was rubbing off on him_.

Tikki's hand slipped out of Plagg's. The boy planted a kiss on the girl's cheek before she slowly approached Hawkmoth. Plagg was fully aware of Tikki's intentions.

" _This Holder is my Child. My gem will not leave her possession, even if it is contrary to her wishes._ " Tikki spoke. " _Plagg's is the same. Our Holders are ours because we're their imprints. If Nooroo did not imprint on you, you will never be his Child, nor be able to effect a Reversal, or be allowed to access your true limits. I am now locking the gem to my Holder._ " Blood-red magic filled the air, focusing on Tikki's ears where her gems lay still. Her earrings lost the black spots. Instead, they became lock symbols, which slowly faded into spots.

Plagg did the same with his gem. The ring was locked on his finger. " **Hawkmoth, you are a disgrace to our Holders and to all of Nooroo's previous Children. Fighting Nooroo's Fairies is not something I particularly enjoy doing, but Akuma are fair game. We will annihilate the butterflies. Be prepared. In the maximum of one year, we will discover your identity and you will relinquish your gem. I pray Tikki's luck will kick in and we won't have to wait before you are stripped of your gem.** " Plagg snarled viciously.

"During that year, I shall release each day one Akuma." Hawkmoth announced. "If I obtain your Miraculous gems during that time, they will be mine."

Tikki had enough of his incessant rambling. She flew up to confront Hawkmoth face-to-face. " _You are a fool, and a disgrace. Akumatized victims will be cleansed. They will never be yours to do with as you please. When they're lost, they are our Lost, and our children. Unlike butterflies, we take care of our Kin. Nooroo is our Kin, and we will reclaim him._ " Tikki swung her yo-yo around. " _You will be purified now._ "

Plagg growled. " **Butterflies are so troublesome.** "

The giant black head in the sky faded into nothing as Tikki captured the final Akuma forming the head. " _Allow me to make this promise on behalf of our Holders._ " Tikki spoke to the public. " _My Holder and my partner's Holder will do everything in our combined power to protect this city. To other Holder Children, I implore you to find your way here and help us. Together, us thirty-six can reduce this Holder to ashes and retrieve Nooroo. I plead other Holder Children to join us two Holder Children and retrieve Nooroo to help this public._ "

Plagg scoffed from his place on the ground and used his baton to join his partner on the ledge. " **Biinky, I don't want to see you. Stay away from Paris.** "

Tikki elbowed him in the stomach. " _He doesn't mean that._ "

* * *

Stoneheart's bright purple butterfly mask came to life on his face once more. "Ladybug and Chat Noir want to take your beloved away from you. Defeat them and bring to be their Miraculous gems."

"Okay, Hawkmoth." Stoneheart responded.

Tikki and Plagg's attention was turned back towards Stoneheart. " _Let's go._ "

" **Hmm.** "

Like a perfectly oiled machine, Tikki and Plagg worked together to take Stoneheart's Akuma object, break it, and purify the Akuma inside.

This occurred in under twenty minutes.

Tikki high-five'd Plagg. " _ **Later!**_ "

Neither of them flew away from each other. Instead, both of them settled higher on the Eiffel tower and enjoyed each other's presence and talking late into the night. When Tikki's gem finally beeped in warning to her transforming back into Ladybug instead of Tikki, the girl sighed. She turned to Plagg and kissed him. Plagg reciprocated. They hesitantly broke apart. Plagg buried his face into Tikki's neck. " **I love you.** "

" _I love you too, Chaton._ " Tikki responded.

Tikki slowly pulled away from her kitten (Plagg whined, making it more difficult for Tikki as she left). Tikki's wings flared. " _I'll see you tomorrow, Plagg._ "

" **A day too long.** " Plagg complained. Still, he smiled. " **I'll see you tomorrow.** "

Tikki hummed before flying off towards the Dupain-Cheng bakery.

Plagg went in the opposite direction, back to the Agreste mansion.

Plagg noncommittally broke one of the window panes when he found all of the windows were locked.

The Kwami wanted sleep, so he detransformed into Adrien straight away and deliberately passed out on Felix.

It was the best night of sleep he'd gotten in centuries.

* * *

Tikki was rudely woken up by an alarm clock yelling in her ear: 'GO-TO-SCHOOL-GO-TO-SCHOOL-GO-TO-SCHOOL'. Thankfully, her Holder had also woken up, gotten out of bed (not without complaining), gotten dressed, tied her hair into a bun, put her phone in Tikki's purse and gently put Tikki into her purse, careful that the small Kwami wouldn't be disturbed by the cool metal surface.

Marinette picked up her bookbag and hurried out the door, not without picking up some (forget some, it was enough to feed an army) cookies leftover from last week to yesterday.

Class occurred without disturbance, though she did most certainly notice the blond boy staring at her at random intervals all through the school day, and she took probably more satisfaction than she should have that Chloe's hair was cut halfway shorter than it was a few days ago.

What the highlight of her day was, though, was this: Chloe was being her usual rotten self and bullying Marinette because she got gum in her hair. Marinette simply calmly got to her feet and _punched the brat in the face_!

Following this, just as calmly as she had stood up, she'd left the cafeteria to check on Tikki. Her cookie supply was halfway gone, but she did snarkily remark that she had warned Marinette that the Reversal caused major physical and psychological changes.

No one noticed Adrien Agreste staring at the door Marinette had left through. No one had ever punched Chloe before, mostly out of fear (her father was the mayor, after all). Still, even Adrien, of all people, realized Chloe was a major brat. She'd deserved everything Marinette dished out, including stealing her spot.

Her eyes were entrancing, her hair perfect, her posture a bit slouchy. Her mannerisms were not without faults, but she was mostly she was rude to people who deserved it and who were also rude to her.

Mostly Chloe, from what he gathered. Marinette didn't even seem to mind that he was a famous model, he was greeted into the class by the girl like anyone else from a semi-normal family (AKA, not his father).

Adrien continued to incessantly think about the girl until, at a break between classes when Plagg was switched to Felix's bag and Adrien incessantly talked about Marinette, Plagg rolled his eyes in unison with Felix. "Lovebirds."

Felix promptly shoved his books into his bag and walked off to his next class.

Adrien couldn't get that comment out of his head. Did he like Marinette?

No, of course not.

Alya relayed a joke to Marinette she had read off the internet somewhere, and Marinette chuckled. It sounded like little bells chiming.

Oh. Yeah, he had a crush on her. Plagg was totally right. Adrien didn't know why he even tried pretending he didn't have a crush on her.


	2. My scarf is pretty

**Hello! I'd like to thank everyone for their kind reviews!**

 **To people who want me to update faster and actually say it to me (I'm so glad some of you are discreet enough to not tell me to my face), please consult chapter ten to another of my stories, Bring Me Back Home (or something along those lines). It might clear some stuff up for you, since a lot of stuff is there. Last paragraph.**

 **Review replies:**

 **chronus79: I agree. In a lot of stories (and even in canon), Ladybug and Chat and everyone else are complete idiots (SERIOUSLY! SAME VOCAL PATTERNS, SAME HAIRSTYLE, SAME EYES, SAME BODY SHAPE, SAME MANNERISMS AROUND CRUSHES! HOW CAN THEY BE SO _BLIND_!).**

 **Jenny: Felix is awesome.**

 _Alya relayed a joke to Marinette she had read off the internet somewhere, and Marinette chuckled. It sounded like little bells chiming._

 _Oh. Yeah, he had a crush on her. Plagg was totally right. Adrien didn't know why he even tried pretending he didn't have a crush on her._

* * *

Adrien moaned into his pillow when the twins got home from school that day while Felix took out his homework and got to work sitting on his orange and green hammock. Plagg sat on Adrien's head, finding it fluffy and soft, like kitten fur.

"I wonder why this math is so easy." Felix wondered as he put away his math textbook thirty minutes later. Adrien still hadn't picked up any of his books or done any of his work.

"Because Father hired the best tutors available, going so far as to bring in some of the best from other countries or even continents, just so we would have a well-rounded education. By now, we would probably be able to enter a good university with no problems at all and emerge top of the class." Adrien groaned.

"Which is why we went to public school in the first place." Felix continued. "Being holed up here, alone, with no one but each other and tutors gets tedious after a while."

"Not to mention boring." Adrien raised his head from his pillow and reached towards his bookbag to bring out the tablet containing history homework and the stylus alongside it. Most of the questions were elementary, at best. Felix was right, this was far too easy.

Felix hummed and gathered all his things, dumping them back in his schoolbag. "I gotta go."

Adrien glanced at the clock. "Right, you have Cantonese and I have Mandarin." Adrien groaned. He wrenched Plagg off his head and shoved him up the sleeve of his white leather jacket with black buttons. "You get the pens and the notes - they're on the computer desk. I'll get the paper."

Felix nodded.

Adrien darted upstairs to his side of the room to collect the Chinese language notes (Cantonese and Mandarin in different folders with their respective writings) while Felix reached under a floorboard and stuffed the pens and blank paper.

As Adrien and Felix left their room to the car, towards their respective teachers' office building, they thought over the unspoken rules ever-present in the Agreste household.

The main rule is this: never speak against Gabriel. The punishment is one more extracurricular activity added to the schedule, sometimes to both of their schedules if the other twin was involved in any way. Because Felix was always far more impetuous, he had the larger schedule, filled with all kinds of activities. While Adrien only had to do Mandarin, Piano, Fencing, Dancing, and Modeling, Felix was forced to do Cantonese, Baking, Sign language, Modeling, Violin, Swimming, German, Spanish (this one by his own request), Etiquette classes, Soccer, Sewing and knitting, and Dancing. Now schoolwork and homework were added to the mix, making everything around fifteen times more difficult. Both twins were immensely thankful Natalie was able to organize their schedule around so efficiently.

Eli, the Gorilla, let them out at the Chinese language building where they took their lessons.

Both twins waited with apprehension for the lesson to be over, but Felix didn't dare look away from the board, and diligently took notes on everything the teacher wrote and several things which their tutor said.

* * *

Marinette's needles swished elegantly against the needles, passing the new fluffy stitch to the other plastic needle. She'd been working on these scarves since she'd learned from Nino through Alya that Adrien and Felix's birthday was soon.

Felix's scarf was already wrapped and embroidered, and set aside in the polka-dotted birthday bag. Adrien's was the only one left.

Marinette stood and found the length of the scarf to copy Felix's. She quickly cast off the soft fabric, knitted in the holes, embroidered her signature on the side with fine-point golden threadwork and went to find her blue ball of yarn, embroidering an A on the end of the scarf in careful cursive as quickly as she could without it making it seem like she was rushing her work.

Marinette took a deep breath. She needed to calm down. Just because their birthday was tomorrow didn't mean she needed to get worked-up about it.

Marinette calmly wrapped Adrien's scarf in blue wrapping paper and wrote his initials, AA, in black permanent marker on his present, laying is beside Felix's, a blue scarf with green embroidery and green wrapping paper with FA written on it to differentiate between his and Adrien's scarves.

She set the scarf inside the bag quickly, so as to not be preoccupied with the presents while fighting against the latest Akuma.

"Tikki, do you sense any Akuma victims?"

Tikki shook her head. "Not yet."

Marinette sighed. Akuma attacks were becoming more and more recent, sometimes in different parts of the city. While it's true that Ladybug and Chat Noir protect Paris, Hawkmoth keeps the entire city hostage at all times.

Tikki had said that there were other Miraculous gem holders out in miscellaneous parts of the world, but that mostly Circles (collections of five gems each (aside from Balance, the strongest and most efficient Circle, a Circle of Seven instead of Five)) stayed in the same continent (or country) instead of risking going into another Holder child's territory (aside from Tikki and Plagg's gems, which are attracted to one another).

Biinky the white rabbit, Spotty the cheetah, Pride the lion, Gassy the skunk, and Phlair the owl: the Wild Circle of Asia.

Killala the goat, Chaal the lamb, Phiin the dolphin, Kayee the serpent, Plitt the rat: the Imbalance-N Circle of South America.

Jubal the reindeer, Leilei the grasshopper, Charr the salamander, Chuchule the mouse, Early the crocodile: the Imbalance-P Circle of North America.

Loggic the fish, Frool the scorpion, Adami the scarab beetle, Flitte the ant, Serena the crab: the Discord Circle of Australia.

There was also a Harmony Circle, but Tikki forgot all their names and species (save for one, a bull named Lyral) ("It's not my fault!" she'd said, "It's been centuries since I've seen any of them, and their territory is a very large place!"), but she did remember that they belonged to Africa.

Finally, Tikki the ladybug, Plagg the black cat, Nooroo the butterfly, Pollen the bumblebee, Trixx the fox demon or she-demon, Duusu the peacock, Wayzz the tortoise: the Balance Circle of Europe.

"I suspect the first full Circle to be joining the Europe Circle will be the Wild Circle or the Harmony Circle." Tikki had said. "Plagg doesn't really have the best relationship with the Wild Circle in general, so I really hope that it's Harmony. It could very well be, too, if Plagg's gotten a Holder whose bad luck leaks everywhere."

Marinette hummed in agreement. "I would hate for Chat to get upset, or worse, for Plagg to spontaneously initiate a Reversal and pick a fight with the poor Child."

Tikki nodded.

* * *

Adrien groaned. His muscles ached from Fencing and he was now collapsed on his bed. Plagg was hidden in his tangled and sweaty hair.

"Felix." Adrien groaned, face still squished on his pillow. "Please come sit on my back."

Felix stood with his book, still reading it as he walked towards Adrien, until he came up to his brother and sat on his back.

Adrien giggled. "Thank you."

Felix hummed. "Aren't you getting a bit old for this?"

"My muscles ache all the time. I do this for you when you ask me." Adrien pointed out.

Felix admitted defeat and kept reading his book, occasionally shifting so his brother's muscles were eased.

During his time, Adrien did his homework.

* * *

Marinette took the tray of macaroons out of the oven. It was during times like this that she really loved baking: because it provided an excellent refuge in times of stress.

Yes, she was a stress-baker.

Another oven beeped and she quickly slid the platters of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven and cooled them off.

It was never to be said that the girl didn't have infinite luck. Just at that moment, screaming was heard.

Quickly shutting off the ovens (she was quite thankful there was nothing else in there), she rushed upstairs.

"Tikki!" Marinette cried. "Tikki!"

Tikki continued to snore.

Marinette groaned, slung the pink purse over her shoulder, and rushed outside.

Marinette watched in horror as everyone was frozen in time. A man flew off down the street.

"Guys!" Marinette cried once she was satisfied the akuma had gone far enough to not hear her. She flew off down the street, wary of any people she happened upon. Really, she needed to find a private place.

Marinette ran off towards the akuma victim, completely outside of costume.

Chat showed up.

Marinette continued running off towards the Akuma.

Chat saw her and was immediately concerned. He went down to find her among the crowd of frozen victims. Chat immediately wrenched her off the ground, adjusted her to fit in the crook of his arm, and used the other arm to vault off into the sky to find somewhere to keep Marinette safe.

Meanwhile, Marinette was internally screaming due to the fact Chat was holding her.

Marinette cuddled into Chat's chest, trusting him completely to keep her safe.

Chat left her on a roof. "Sorry, I gotta go."

"Sure." Marinette smiled brightly. "Go do your job, I'll be fine."

Chat smiled. "See ya later!"

Marinette watched as Chat left, then opened her purse, poking Tikki. "Tikk. Tikk. Tikk."

Tikki groaned. "Marinette?"

"Yeah." Marinette confirmed, looking out over Paris's skyline, which was turning pink and orange with the sunset. "We need to go help Chat."

Tikki smiled. "Just say the words."

"TRANSFORM ME!"

Tikki was sucked into her earrings and Marinette was replaced by Ladybug.

* * *

Chat massaged the crick in his neck and groaned. Clockwork, a man akumatized for having his profession, watch-making, called into question the importance of his profession (they were just old watches, what was their use?) by a brown-haired girl. He didn't get her name.

Ladybug scowled. "Lila Rossi." They heard news from all over the world, including bullying reports. The main people causing akumatizations in Paris were Chloe Bourgeois, Andre Bourgeois, and Lila Rossi (of all of the akumatizations, nine so far, were caused by Lila, the mayor, and Chloe, or had something to do with them).

Chat snarled. "I'm going to kill her!"

Ladybug hummed in agreement. "As the casket closes, I'll put gum in her hair."

Chat laughed. "Forget killing her, we should only put gum in her hair!"

Ladybug chuckled nervously. "Great, I'll go buy the sticky stuff. Should we put it all over her pillow or directly in her rat's nest?"

Chat's joyful laughter was sweet and euphoric. It made Ladybug smile.

Chat leaned in closer to Ladybug for a kiss-

Her alarm clock buzzed, startling her out of her precious dream.

Marinette groaned, burying her face in her pillow. While it was true Lila had been responsible for five of the nine Akuma so far, Marinette was convinced she might change (emphasis on _might_. She wasn't particularly enthusiastic).

Marinette smacked the alarm clock (it shut off with a satisfying smash) and got to her feet with a groan. She went downstairs and slipped on black leggings with a black skirt lined with acid-green lines, decorated with acid-green paw prints (her other clothes were in the wash). Her shirt was a light lime green (so was her normal shirt and jacket), her shoes black leather boots up to her knees (green zippers and linings, of course), and chose to tie her hair up with one red ribbon and another green ribbon (she couldn't find the other red ribbon).

Marinette slung her bookbag over her shoulder, grabbed the birthday present bag from the corner where she'd left it, went downstairs, grabbed some cookies for Tikki, her lunch bag she'd made herself last night, and left to go to school.

The first people she'd me were, unsurprisingly, Adrien and Felix Agreste (she was so lucky she didn't have to lug this all around the school all the way to homeroom). "Hey!" Marinette smiled brightly, waving her hand happily in the air towards both of them.

Adrien hid behind Felix, while Felix sighed.

Marinette approached them both and, ignoring the cowering Adrien behind Felix, shoved the bag into Felix's hands. "Make sure Adrien gets his, eh?"

Felix smiled. "Of course, miss."

Marinette groaned. "Don't be so formal. My name is Marinette. If you don't feel comfortable with that, please address me by 'Luna'. Everyone who doesn't know me formally does."

Felix hummed. "I'll keep that in mind, Cherrynette." The fun little nickname was after her obsession of cherries. So far, every lunchtime, she'd had at least one treat concerning cherries (cherry pie, cherry cupcakes, cherry and pomegranate juice, cherry cookies, etc) and the pattern of flowers on her white shirt she wore at least once every week was blooming cherry flowers, not to mention her purse, which was cherry-blossom pink and had a pattern of cherry blossom flowers.

Marinette stuck out her tongue, but retracted it again with her tinkling-bells laugh as she realized just how accurate the nickname was. "See ya, Felix! Bye, Adrien!"

Adrien nervously raised a hand to wave at her retreating form, while Felix simply smiled.

Felix looked down into the bag and saw two differently wrapped presents, clearly differentiating between them. On one was written FA while another was written AA.

"Here, this one's yours." Felix spoke, handing Adrien his carefully wrapped blue package on which was transcribed AA.

Adrien's face burned. He'd never expected such a nice gesture from her. He whimpered, the paper wrappings still crinkling beneath his trembling fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Felix, tell me what it is, I can't look!"

Felix tore off the wrapping paper. "It's a scarf."

Adrien relaxed.

"A very well-made scarf embroidered with my initials, the color matching my eyes save for the embroidery which is in a darker shade of blue, nearing black." Felix continued, making Adrien more nervous by the second. "The stitches are all about the same size. She spent time on this scarf, and she took care to cover up her mistakes, which is anywhere she dropped a stitch. The fabric is a bit thicker in some areas because of that, but hardly visible aesthetically."

Adrien gulped and ripped off the wrapping. It was as intricate as Felix had described. Green to match his eyes, embroidered AA in gold, a very soft fabric (not like the scarves their grandmother knit for them once. That wool was tough and tough and scratchy). Adrien rubbed the fabric softly between his fingers, appreciating the warm, soft fabric.

Felix wrapped his scarf around his neck. It contrasted nicely with his black coat and black jeans.

Adrien mimicked him, and just like Felix, his own scarf contrasted beautifully with his own white coat and blue jeans.

Satisfied, and their days brightened quite significantly, the Agreste twins entered the school smiling brightly.

Until Chloe came up to them, snobby and pretentious as ever. "Adrihoney, Kitty-Felix!" Chloe cried wrapping her arms around both of the boys' necks.

Felix shoved her off and Adrien calmly removed her from his personal space. "Please keep in mind, Miss Bourgeois, that I am autistic." Felix crossed his arms.

Chloe covered her mouth and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Fe-fe."

Felix crossed his arms. "And stop calling me Fe-fe. We're not five years old anymore."

Chloe smiled and punched his arm playfully. "Well, that's what you get when your cousin's one of your best friends for years."

Adrien smiled, watching his twin brother and Chloe bicker like children. They were always like this, ever since they were toddlers (Felix and Chloe had never quite gotten along, but the fighting was playful, and mostly out of habit by now).

"Did you get the present I sent you both?" Chloe asked, voice coated in honey, running her fingers through her pony tail (it only reached the top of her neck because it had been cut around a week ago because of the gum Marinette had placed in her hair).

"Uh-" Felix began.

"What present?" Adrien picked up where Felix left off.

"You didn't get it?" Chloe asked, genuinely shocked. She hated that her cousins were looking so glum on their birthday, why hadn't her present to them come yet? "I'll have to go see if Daddy can arrange for a faster delivery. I think it'll be there by the end of the day."

Felix smiled gently. "Thank, couz."

"Anytime, sweetie."

"Don't call me that, either." Felix laughed.

Adrien smiled.

* * *

The first part of the day passed quickly, and Marinette was thankful she was able to participate in her classes instead of being called away to fight a victim again.

When lunch occurred, she was eating at the table upstairs talking to her mother, occasionally helping if she was otherwise preoccupied with other pastries or other ingredients.

In the middle of lunch hour, while Marinette was eating her lunch (Sushi, cheese, and orange juice and cherries), a purple bubble flew through the window to capture her mother. It swished and swirled around her before taking her up into the sky, speckled with green. Everyone above the age of eighteen, it seemed, had been transported into the sky.

Her father flew into the sky alongside Sabine.

An Akuma's face appeared in the skyline. "Hey, my peeps! I'm giving you a day off from your parents today, and while the cats are away the mice will play! Have fun!"

Tikki flew out of her purse (with embroidered sakura blossoms on it). "Bubbler. We need to go, Marinette!"

"Yeah." Marinette steeled herself, going to her room.

"TRANSFORM ME!"

* * *

"Hey, Felix? Keep them distracted, no?"

"Sure, Adrien." Felix smiled. "Go do your work."

Adrien's fake smile fell, revealing a tired boy who's been thrust into a role of incredible responsibility. "I don't know if I can fight my best friend."

"You need to. That's Bubbler, not Nino. I would take Nathaniel on if he were an Akuma."

"Be thankful, then," Adrien growled, "That you are not Chat Noir."

Adrien transformed and flew away to fight Bubbler.

* * *

"Hi, kitten." Ladybug greeted as Chat approached her.

"Buggy." Chat greeted the masked beauty. They continued running towards the Agreste mansion (Adrien had left his mansion and gone halfway across Paris before doubling back and heading towards there under the guise of being on patrol, then sensing an Akuma).

Ladybug cleared her throat and offered a hand to Adrien. "Shall we?"

Chat smiled. "Let's."

Each of them darted off together towards the Agreste mansion.

* * *

Bubbler landed in front of Felix from his place on top of his purple bubble. "Where is Adrien?"

"Gone back to school. I have Spanish right now, or I did before you took away the adults. Speaking of, I should think Adrien would be in a car crash right about now, since there's no one to drive the vehicles and everything." Felix sighed. "If only he were two years older..."

Nino groaned and took all the children off the street. "Okay, peeps of Paris, change of plans. When the cars stop moving, you can have as much fun as you want. Deal? Great! I'll let you all down soon."

Unfortunately, those bubbles included Chat and Ladybug.

Thirty minutes later, Bubbler let the children old enough to safely make peanut-butter sandwiches go. The rest were returned to their families or adoptive families.

Oddly enough, Hawkmoth had also been abducted and was giving orders to Nino from inside Bubbler's bubble.

Several people saw him, too. Some tried to relay a message to Ladybug and Chat Noir, but through the bubble's interference, it was like a game of telephone.

Eventually, Ladybug and Chat received the message, but it was all garbled. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and Lady and her cat were left with a very strange and garbled message.

"Butterfly-Cloth pine tree water circle." Chat repeated. "It doesn't make any sense. Why would someone want to say that to us?"

"I don't know, but that message was pretty scrambled." Ladybug sighed. "Remember how hard it was to hear through the bubble?"

"Yeah?"

"It's a game of telephone." Ladybug spoke. "The message gets scrambled after a while. Butterfly-Cloth, Butterfly-Cloth..."

"Butterfly is pretty obvious." Chat spoke. "A small insect with relatively large wings. If this is a game of Telephone, we can assume Cloth means 'moth'. Hawkmoth."

"Pine tree, I think, is totally lost. Water circle? Water is a liquid. Bubbles are primarily shaped liquid soap with air. Circle, sphere? Liquid sphere, a bubble? Hawkmoth bubble. Hawkmoth is in a bubble!"

Obviously, Ladybug and Chat looked through each of the bubbles, but the Moth Holder had apparently detransformed and floated away a while ago, so their efforts were fruitless.

So, they went back to their original goal: freeing the Akuma in Bubbler.

Unfortunately, most people were encouraging towards Ladybug and Chat, making their job ten times harder, since they'd lost the element of surprise.

Eventually, though, Ladybug had used her Lucky Charm, a huge twenty-five-pound wrench. Instead of looking for clues, she hit Bubbler with it in the face. Naturally, he passed out, and Ladybug was able to take the bubble wand and snap it over her knee, releasing the Akuma. Ladybug quickly purified the black butterfly, turning it into a pure-white moth.

She threw the wrench up into the sky. The Charm turned into a swarm of warm ladybugs, flying through the air and correcting the damage caused by the Akuma.

Ladybug and Chat performed the ceremonial fist-bump with each other and left their separate ways into different alleyways. Marinette rushed home to stock up on cookies (damn, Tikki was a glutton), then rushed back to school to collect homework, books, and her tablet. As it was the end of the day (they had spent several hours searching for Hawkmoth and two hours working to free Bubbler's Akuma), Marinette returned home and got started on her homework.

All she knew was that she had more than a few questions to ask her social studies teacher.

* * *

"Alright, even I find this confusing and convoluted, and I've been learning nonstop since I was three." Adrien admitted, reading over the homework.

In 'Adrien-ese', this meant he found his work confusing.

"Keep going. You're supposed to translate all of your notes from French or English to Mandarin. Your job is considerably easier than mine. German, French, English, Spanish, and Cantonese have only one similarity altogether: they're known languages that people can speak and read and write in."

Adrien chuckled. "Stop being so boring, Felix. What's happening here is far more entertaining."

"You mean the lazy magical gluttonous cat that turns into a leather superhero suit? Yes, I'm confused about him too, but obviously this isn't a dream, so we might as well accept it. We have a weird cat god living with us."

Plagg stretched much like a cat as he awoke from his nap. "Eh, I've been called worse." Plagg sighed. "I want cheese!"

* * *

Marinette chuckled. "Hold on, Tikki. I'll get you your cookies."

A minute later, Sabine Cheng and Tom Dupain wondered who'd taken all of their stale cookies from the past week as Marinette snuck up the stairs.

* * *

Marinette did her homework, making it good enough to be adequate at the very least. She had more than enough to worry about as Marinette juggling her duties as Ladybug.

She wished Chat would come along and help her. It would be much better having a study buddy.

As luck would have it (she was so startled she almost fell out of her chair), Chat knocked on her skylight window, which doubled as the entrance for her rooftop. "Princess? Can I come in?"

Marinette sighed and unlocked her window. "Why are you here? It's raining, you could catch a cold!"

"You mean _cat_ -ch a cold?" Chat punned.

Marinette frowned. "Ha-ha, very funny."

"No, seriously. I just wanted to see you." Chat shrugged. "Don't really know why, but you're a very pretty girl."

As Chat got loser, she saw the inconsistencies in his suit's design, but the biggest difference lay in his eyes, though no one would notice if they weren't very close to Chat or working with him on a daily basis.

Marinette growled. "You're not Chat Noir. Are you?"

The Chat figure growled and got down on all fours. "Princess, my name is Chat, you're quite right. However, my name is Copy-Chat. As neurotypicals say, I am an 'Akuma'. Don't really know why, as an Akuma is actually the black butterfly, and we're infected by them, so the proper term would be 'Akuma victim'."

Marinette got up and slowly walked backwards downstairs in calm, calculated steps (she'd had the set-up on her bed since she was nine, of course she knows how many steps it takes to get downstairs, and how far the steps are from each other. "Why are you here?"

"Is that not obvious?" Copy-Chat asked. "You are my wish-keeper. My purpose is to grant your wish until Ladybug and Chat Noir arrive, at which time all of the copies will rally and destroy them."

"Don't underestimate Ladybug and Chat." Marinette sighed. "Well, since you're my Copy, will you please help me with my homework?"

Copy nodded. "As you wish, Princess."

Copy and Marinette spent several hours together until both were satisfied she would get a very high passing grade on everything. At that time, Chat left with Marinette's thanks. Marinette finally transformed into Ladybug and left.

* * *

Adrien concluded Copy-Marinette was weird. Felix had known this since she'd arrived.

Copy-Marinette was a weird one, that's for sure.

Copy-Marinette had fallen asleep on Adrien after she, Adrien, and Felix had watched a movie. Her head was fallen on Adrien's shoulder and her legs curled up into a ball. The body was warm and slightly heavy, almost like it was physically there.

"Felix, do you mind looking after the Wish?" Adrien pleaded. "If she asks where I've gone, tell her I need to go to... uh... Writing courses in Mandarin."

"Got it." Felix sighed, gently removing the red hairbands from Marinette's pigtails, causing the raven hair to curtain beautifully around her face. Marinette curled up further into Felix. Her head fell on his lap and she sighed, content.

"Plagg, claws out." Adrien transformed under a blanket so the sudden light change didn't affect Copy-Marinette's sleeping patterns.

* * *

"I am Wish-Granter!" Wish yelled. "Come fight me, Holders! Come fight the newest and most developed creation!"

Ladybug tripped her, snatched her hair clip, and crushed it beneath her foot, releasing the Akuma inside. "Most developed Akuma indeed." Ladybug sighed.

It was at that moment that Chat arrived.

"Take care of her, eh?" Ladybug sighed. "I need to get going."

Chat sighed. "Alright. Later, buggy."

"You too, kitty-cat."

* * *

Each day, Hawkmoth released an Akuma. Eventually, after Reversals were needed more and more and Marinette and Adrien grew too exhausted to fight, a new superhero joined: a blonde teenage girl named Queen Bee.

"Nice to meet you!" Queen Bee giggled. She figured it would be good to not show her school personality while in superhero form, else people might figure out Chloe's actually Queen Bee.

Ladybug's suit grew a skirt. Ladybug bowed to Queen bee, fanning out her strange dress, which assimilated back into her costume when she was done. "It's good to have you on the team, Queen Bee. There are a few rules. Did your Kwami explain anything?"

"She told me some things about my powers, but not much more. I was a bit excited." Queen Bee scratched her head sheepishly with a bright smile.

Ladybug smiled, too. Queen Bee's optimism was infectious. "Well, first, you're not allowed to reveal your real identity to anyone. Absolute secrecy is required, or Hawkmoth might target people close to us to get to us on an emotional level, which could easily get us akumatized, too."

"Secondly," Chat continued, "You can't leave your Gem out in the open. It needs to be hidden or form-shifted so people don't deduce you're actually a superhero. For example, in my real form, my ring is silver and on my opposite hand."

"Mine is also form-shifted into hoop earrings instead of buds." Ladybug lifted her fringe of hair to demonstrate.

Queen Bee sighed. "So, mine could be like a hair elastic?"

"You get it!" Ladybug smiled. "All you have to do is manipulate the gem to take the form of whatever you want."

"I see." Queen Bee smiled. "Alright. Third of all?"

"Your Kwami. He or she needs to be hidden in a compartment." Chat spoke.

"Well, I have a purse, so that part shouldn't be too hard. What's four?" Queen Bee asked.

"Your Kwami needs food. He or she will ask for the kind of food he or she wants. No matter how crazy the food is, for example chili peppers-" Ladybug was cut off.

"Or salt-" Chat continued.

"Or cheese-" Plagg was offended by Ladybug's suggestion.

"Or yogurt-" Tikki actually liked yogurt and berries mixed with granola! What was Plagg trying to pull?

"Okay, I get it." Queen bee held up a hand to placate them. "Pollen likes honey candy, which shouldn't be too hard to get. Anything else?"

"What's your weapon?" Ladybug asked.

"Uh... Here it is." Queen Bee reached behind her head to her comb, which lit up and produced a pair of twin pistols. Dart guns, to be exact. "Pollen says they shoot a special type of honey that freezes people in their tracks, but that anyone to do directly with the Gems is immune, which means Akuma victims are impervious, but not their subjects or their army. My secret superpower is the tranquilizer inside here, violet instead of honey-yellow. The method of travel is my wings, but Pollen says I should do that only after a few transformations, so until then I can run across rooftops."

"Sounds great." Ladybug smiled brightly.

"Okay, but first we need to make sure you're not actually an Akuma. What did your Kwami tell you?" Chat was suspicious of the newest member.

"I was chosen to fight alongside Ladybug and Chat Noir by an old man named Master Fu, the Guardian of the Balance Circle... I don't quite know what that last part means, though..." Queen Bee replied.

Ladybug shrugged. "I believe her."

Queen Bee smiled. She was happy, and all was calm.

That last thought was redacted when she heard several explosions in order.

* * *

A man with a migraine (it was truly terrible) had been akumatized, and for good reason. He'd gone out drinking last night and had come home with a hangover, even though he was still very drunk. He was in college and had a roommate, who chose to throw open the door in the morning and greet him by throwing open the curtains and shouting that he'd made eggs (he'd thrown up soon after).

He was very mad at his roommate, enough to be sensed by Hawkmoth and akumatized.

He was an Akuma that caused all sound to be eliminated, and the more sound he stole, the more power he gained (deaf people and people who knew sign language weren't really bothered by this).

 **Alright, I know what you're going to say. 'Queen Bee is a Temporary Gem used when Ladybug and Chat Noir need a lot of help!'. Well fine, but this is Fanfiction. More importantly, it's _my_ Fanfiction. So, Queen Bee is a permanent Holder, and Pollen's Holder is Chloe Bourgeois. Queen Bee is very nice (a reflection of how Chloe would act if she weren't trying to be popular through cruelty), and Chloe's behavior will improve as a result of her owning a Gem and a Kwami influencing her decisions.**

 **Also, Ladybug and Chat Noir do need help, desperately. Fu recognized this (Ladybug and Chat Noir were being very slow and their civilian forms were very tired in their classes), so he sent out another Gem to help them. That same Gem happened to go to Chloe Bourgeois (she was the person most compatible to the bee: sweet to people she likes, a hard worker at things she cares about, a good worker in groups of other bees, and a superb collector of things she finds interesting). A Gem brings the most positive aspects of your personality to light, even in civilian form, which is why Marinette or Adrien aren't akumatized so easily.**

 **Have a good day!**

 **Sapphy**


	3. Mostly Queen Bee

**Hello! I'd like to thank everyone for their kind reviews!**

 _A man with a migraine (it was truly terrible) had been akumatized, and for good reason. He'd gone out drinking last night and had come home with a hangover, even though he was still very drunk. He was in college and had a roommate, who chose to throw open the door in the morning and greet him by throwing open the curtains and shouting that he'd made eggs (he'd thrown up soon after)._

 _He was very mad at his roommate, enough to be sensed by Hawkmoth and akumatized._

 _He was an Akuma that caused all sound to be eliminated, and the more sound he stole, the more power he gained (deaf people and people who knew sign language weren't really bothered by this)._

* * *

Eliminating sound was actually peaceful, to the majority of Paris. Some fifth of the population actually were grateful for the reprieve, and reveled in it, hoping it never to be over. Perhaps if the other four-fifths of the population weren't of the opposite opinion, Ladybug would have considered not actually doing anything against this one, opting to walk away and let PSE rule the streets of Paris.

Unfortunately, sound was very useful at any point. A person very well-acquainted with sound could hear someone walking normally on the sidewalk from inside their room, playing music at top volume (it's a blessing and a curse, lemme tell ya). It served as a point to let you know if someone fired a gun or exploded a bomb, or wanted to get your attention.

This, of course, was the type of hyper-sensitive hearing the current akuma yearned to be rid of. Being able to hear a pin drop in an auditorium filled with people trying to watch a movie wasn't a good thing. It often caused migraines and the occasional crying fit (Out of pain, not because he was being a sissy!), but to wake up hungover with the need to attend classes, and every minute noise making your nausea/pain-induced headache worse, someone throwing up the curtains with a shout of good morning and the scent of eggs to an upset stomach does make someone mad enough to lash out.

Thus, of course a silence-affiliated Akuma took the time to exact retribution on a city that had caused him so much pain over the years, and chose to explode a few bombs. Just to cause some fear, not to kill anyone. In fact, he made sure not to kill anyone. That would be mean.

Now the bombs, however, weren't peaceful and Ladybug chose that moment to declare enough to be enough.

Queen Bee had trouble following the nonverbal commands relayed by Ladybug, but got the general gist of it when Chat explained in PSE (which thank god he knew). Her honey stingers could stop the bombs and distract Silencer long enough for Chat and Ladybug to get this done properly.

She understood that. They were veteran Akuma fighters. For the moment, she was still incredibly green, and she was somewhat dispensable.

Pollen had told her that, out of the Balance Circle, Laybug and Chat noir's jewelry was the most important. Since their holders were some of the only people who could synchronize with the ring and earrings, they were the least dispensable among the current Chosen against Hawkmoth.

As she worked, she found that they had a nonverbal understanding of one another. She supposed it was necessary when a villain had a functioning pair of ears just like them, and could grasp battle strategy just like they could. Still, it was a bit odd to see just how fluidly they moved with one another. After only a few weeks working together, it was so strange to see them so serious.

Or maybe it wasn't.

Paris was a city constantly in danger of attack, and got attacked at least once a day, sometimes more, and most of the time more than one Akuma at once.

This was not a rare thing. People got ticked off all the time. The more mad, the more power. It was why Hawkmoth generally picked the people who were pissed off for more reasons than their sibling punching them or girls pissed off on their menstrual cycle. It had to be an intense anger, like the person keeping this backstory.

Generally, anyways. The rich and spoiled get angry over a lot less, which is why a lot of the pompous assholes who became Akuma were generally the rich and/or famous.

The point is, the amount of anger has to build up. Being held behind floodgates, only to be released in one fell swoop, leaving a flood of negativity to wash over them like a plague. That was the kind of anger that needed to be triggered.

Chloe could recognize these types of people. She was one of those types of people. It wasn't healthy to keep emotions bottled up like that, so she kept tormenting people until they let the dam break. She tried to stop after the discovery of the Akumae, but it was a hard habit to break. Akumatization was probably traumatic, though. Being the cause of so much destruction and possible death was horrifying to her. The superheroes aside, there was still a huge destruction factor to consider. If Ladybug's miraculous should ever be taken before Chat's the collateral damage would be incredible.

Queen Bee shot at the explosions of power, trapping the civilians in a protective cocoon of hardened honey, leaving them safe from the explosions.

She winced as the screams of pain reached her ears, granting more power to the newest Akuma as he glowed a smoky midnight purple. Ladybug and Chat moved soundlessly across the rooftops, careful not to add to his power. Queen Bee wasn't really accustomed to this, and her running footsteps were only relatively silent as she frantically protected the civilians alongside the calm and collected holders at her side.

The blonde took a deep breath, It was silent to her ears, which was slightly disconcerting. She could do this.

"G **i** v **e** m **e** y **o** u **r** m **i** r **a** c **u** l **o** u **s**! **"** a demonic voice rang across the city, amplifying sound to how he normally heard. Queen Bee slapped her hands over her ears. _Goddamn_ , that hurt! No wonder he was Akumatized!

Ladybug and Chat Noir were similarly incapacitated.

(She couldn't do this, what was she thinking?!)

Raising her shaking hands, wielding her guns, she shot with a marksman's ability at the victim's akuma-occupied object, coating it with honey and cutting him away from the source of his power.

Ladybug was still reeling from pain triggered through sound pressure. Chat, however, was quick to get over the pounding ache in his skull and called for cataclysm. He destroyed the akuma object and Ladybug destroyed it. Ears ringing, Chloe release her hold on all the civilians and ran to hide behind a building. (No one followed her, thank god. They were still disoriented from suddenly hearing again and the others were watching he pretty ladybugs fly around.)

As was suggested of her, she shifted the form of her Miraculous so it was a hair elastic.

"Good job on your first fly," Pollen said, flying into Chloe's purse for some hard honey candy.

Chloe almost smiled. She instead took her phone out of her purse, careful not to drop any candy or Pollen.

"Daddy? I got lost during the attack. Can you track that tracker you put in my shoes? I wanna go home." Chloe spoke sofly.

" _Of course, dearest. Wait a few minutes, okay?_ "

"Yeah. Just please hurry?"

" _I know. I'll hurry._ "

"Thank you. See ya tonight at dinner. Stay safe." Chloe hung up.

Five minues later, Chloe slipped into a relatively inconspicuous black 1979 mustang car. If anyone noticed Chloe shifted her purse so it didn't squish against the door and kept another hand on it so it wouldn't be squished by the seat belt, or that the bump on the side moved like it was breathing, no one commented.

Honestly, the city was weird enough. They could deal with a breathing purse.


	4. Hero's Day

**AN: I just saw _Startrain_ and I'm fucking PISSED. To anyone who's read quicksilversquared's _Sleepy Cuddles_ (under my favourites), the first half of _Startrain_ and the first chapter of _Sleepy Cuddles_ look PRETTY DAMNED FAMILIAR (Adrien and Marinette cuddling on their way to a school field trip, Alya switching places with Adrien so they can sleep together and Alya can have peace, the photo-taking)! I checked the dates. The first chapter for _Sleepy Cuddles_ came out in February of 2016, and _Startrain_ came out in September of 2019, more than three years later. It's like they _want_ us to call them out for art theft.**

 **So I am.**

 **Fuck you all, art thieves.**

 **Also: This chapter's pretty long since the last one was pretty short.**

 **Also also: I'm reevaluating the ship. Endgame is Lukadrigaminette (polyship _Luk_ a X _Adri_ en X Ka _gami_ X Mari _nette_ ), starting with Marichat and continuing to add people to their relationship. Because when in doubt, polyship.**

 **Quote for the chapter:**

 _"This is just to trigger the pack of thermals under the gym. THOSE are bombs. People are going to see the ashes of Westerberg High School, and think 'There's a school that self-destructed, not because society doesn't care, but because that school WAS society!' The only place Heathers and Marthas can get along is in Heaven!"_

 _"I wish your mom had been a little stronger."_

 _Veronica & JD, Heathers the Musical._

* * *

Chloe ran her fingers through her hair. The new honeymilk dandruff shampoo was working wonders for her hair.

Pollen was eating candy in her purse, sometimes swirling around. The honey candy was certainly going to be getting a boom in business if how much Pollen ate was any indication.

"Pollen," Chloe said, unzipping her purse so she could look I the little god's direction.

The little yellow bee god peered up at her, expressive blue eyes curious. "Yes, my Queen?"

"You told me about the other Miraculouses. There are thirty-seven left, yeah?"

"It's the only Miracle Box to have survived Feast. Master Fu split us into seven Circles, and they _should_ still be split up for all the imbalance, but after your Second World War and four of the Guardians didn't survive the massacres, Master Fu regrouped us all. Nooroo and Duusu don't know because they weren't with us. I wish we could contact them," Pollen said sullenly.

"How many of there were you before Feast?"

"Thirty-five to a miracle box, except for ours, which was more like thirty-seven because we're the ones with the ladybug and black cat. Thirty-five miracle boxes."

"That's a thousand two hundred and twenty-seven little gods!" Chloe exclaimed.

"Let it never be said you're bad at insta-math," Pollen giggled.

"If you do enough shopping, you get good," Chloe said offhandedly. Another thought occurred to her. "Where do the kwamis come from?"

"Mom and Dad were created with the Big Bang, and then created the Earth with a few wishes. Whenever a thing that could communicate got the miraculouses, they would usually make a wish, and whatever that wish was usually created a new kwami. You could say Mom and Dad were created at the center of the universe and then all of the rest of us are the combination of them and a human's personality."

"Who's your mom and dad?"

"Ladybug's kwami and Chat Noir's kwami."

Chloe's eyes bugged as she looked down at the little bee kwami in her purse. "Really? And how old are you?"

Pollen shrugged. "I dunno. You silly humans keep changing your calendars, and keeping track of age for more than a few millennia becomes such a headache."

"I get that. It's so hard keeping track of how old I am. I still sometimes say Fefe's thirteen, even though that was at least three years ago, I _think_. And no matter how hard I try, I always forget how old daddy is."

Pollen licked her paws. "Oh, hatchling, I think you should also formulate a list of people who could take your miraculous if you were incapacitated or your identity were revealed."

"Ya, know, that's not a bad idea," Chloe said.

"Of course it's not a bad idea, I'm the one who came up with it."

"I'm almost at the school. Hide," Chloe ordered.

Pollen dutifully ducked her head down and ducked her antennae to avoid getting caught in the zipper as Chloe entered the school.

Marinette wore her hair down today, and was constantly fiddling with her loose locks. Adrien was practically drooling over himself while Felix looked at the windows like he wanted to jump. Or maybe push him out.

Was that laughter? A warm, soft feeling passed through her ears, like tinkling bells.

Just her imagination, she decided.

Her school bag dug into her elbow from the weight of the books. But that was okay. She'd need to get used to that.

Sabrina had given her an ultimatum recently. She'd started to get overwhelmed by the double homework and demanded Chloe do her own work, and Chloe accepted since it would be lonely without her only friend, so Sabrina was helping her with her homework and techniques on conserving time and answering questions.

Pollen was helping too, so that was cool.

~?~

"Ladybug, I love you!"

Ladybug's nose scrunched up. "Gross. I'm thirteen."

Chat giggled at the rapid paling of the male adults behind the cameras.

~?~

Adrien very gently picked up the Peacock miraculous, turning it over in his hand. With human touch, the pin jolted and flickered between active mode and camouflage mode.

Adrien stared at the gem, a numb sense of shock enveloping him like freezing water. Gooseflesh rose on his arms when he heard footsteps behind him. They weren't Natalie's clicking high heels, or Felix's near-silent steps, or Eli's hulking stomps. The dress shoes belonging to his father were clearly defined on the marble floor.

"Adrien," Adrien's dad said gently. "What are you holding?"

Adrien looked down at the Peacock again. "A flickering pin." Adrien turned back to face his father. "When were you going to tell me you're the owner of a miraculous?"

Gabriel took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and put them back on. "It's not as if this is an easy subject to broach, Adrien. But we should really be discussing this with Felix. If I'm going to tell you this story, you both need to hear it."

Gabriel took Adrien's hand and dragged him to his room, where Felix was tuning his violin. He stopped at the sight of Gabriel, putting down the expensive instrument. "Pere? Adrien? What's going on?"

Gabriel led Felix by the shoulder, and both twins sat on the white-fabric couch. Gabriel took the opposite side, on the coffee table.

He took a deep breath. "Before you two were born, your mother and I went on a trip to Tibet. While we were hiking in the mountains, we came across two miraculouses and a book. One of them is this one," Gabriel uncovered the peacock pin. "I held this one and I called myself Featherweight," Felix bit his tongue to stop the sassy remark in its tracks. "Your mother held the other, and called herself Titania. We used them infrequently so as to keep them secret, but when we felt someone _very deeply_ wronged, like say for instance sexual assault, we used our powers to help them. One day, your mother went on a trip to Tibet again, and she never came back. But I recognize the power of this man who calls himself Hawkmoth. He stole your mother's miraculous while she was away, and probably has her imprisoned or has killed her."

"Then... why haven't you reclaimed your title as Featherweight?" Felix asked. "If this really is mom's miraculous, we have a right to try and get it back, and if mom's still alive, we could save her!"

Gabriel took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "My powers create people who wield creatures called Sentimonsters. Once those Sentimonsters are created, I can't do anything to control them, and can barely snap them out of existence if they do something contrary to my wishes. My miraculous is damaged in that fashion. After a while, I could barely transform. The problems on Duusu were getting worse and worse, and it was torture for him, so I stopped taking up the gem in people's favour. Your mother's miraculous was a lot more safe to use, so she took over the responsibilities we'd claimed for our own."

Adrien breathed out a shaky breath. "Why haven't you told us any of this before," and his voice sounded weak even to his own ears.

Gabriel winced. "When you were in preschool, you kept talking about mommy and daddy's little gods with the other kids, so we had to start hiding them from you. We'd planned on telling you when you were sixteen and we were sure you could keep the secret and understand the necessity of keeping out identities safe, but circumstances have interfered with that." Gabriel looked up from his gem and held it out for one of his sons to take.

Adrien and Felix leaned back into the couch away from the peacock.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "You don't have to tell me. I know you're the holders for the Black Cat ring and the Rat bracelet. It's exactly why I've been allowing you both to order absurd amounts of camembert and swiss cheese. But I need one of you to take this miraculous to your Guardian. They'll know what to do."

Felix took it and put it in one of his many coat pockets. "What about the miraculous grimoire?"

Gabriel nodded. "Just let me make a digital copy, and I'll get it you."

By the end of the night, Fu had a grimoire to read and a miraculous to heal, courtesy of Krysa.

~?~

Miraculouses were starting to pop up everywhere. Ladybug and Chat Noir were very clearly the leaders of the pack, and Queen Bee was TIC after the duo, but Rena Rouge showed up, and then Ryuko, Patches (or just Bun-Bun), King Monkey, Pegasus, Krysa, and Carapace once and a while. The turtle seemed to be the most infrequent holder, never showing up for patrol or anything. Ladybug said that the Turtle belonged to their Guardian, and he was getting so old that he could not survive without his miraculous in short bursts.

But when Kim showed up to school with a diadem, Chloe started noticing things. Like how Max's glasses suddenly changed shape, and Rose's hairband even though she hadn't worn one since kindergarten (and especially not one that wasn't pink), a new fencer who wore a Japanese-style choker, and Alya had a new chain she wouldn't take out from under her shirt. Marinette never changed the style of her earrings, even though it seemed like she had a new pair each day last year. Adrien suddenly wore a ring, even though she'd never seen it before. Felix fiddled with a bracelet exactly where the rat miraculous was on Krysa. Nino also adopted a green sweater with neon green accents that he wore around his waist, and would often fondle the rubber bands on his wrist.

Chloe could practically see the raised hairband becoming brown bunny ears on Rose's head as Patches, and the gold-black swirling stripes travelling up Kagami's toned leg as Ryuko. She'd almost called Alya 'Rena' yesterday while they were working on a project, and definitely yelled "JUST KISS ALREADY" at King Monkey and Pegasus for all their crush antics in the middle of class carry over into their superhero identities. Adrien and Felix most certainly knew that the other was respectively Chat Noir and Krysa, and often covered for each other, jut as Chloe covered for her classmates when they were out.

She seemed to be the only one even trying to be inconspicuous, though. It was like a neon glowing sign with flashing light pointing at their heads reading I'M A MIRACULOUS HOLDER COME AKUMATIZE ME. How difficult was it to form-shift your miraculous multiple times, or change the colour, or move it around? Like, really. What are you thinking, Kim?

Gah.

A raindrop fell gently on her notebook. The roof in the library was never leaky. What was goi-

The water reached her feet and she squealed. The window outside was starting to show the buildup was not just inside the classroom.

Paris was being turned into an underwater kingdom.

Chloe leapt out of her seat and darted off into the water, weaving past the few people still in the school after hours and their waterlogged things. Thank you, Olympic-sized swimming pool. She reached the outside of the school, but felt an insistence for air creeping up on her, so she let go and swam upwards. Her lungs burned when she hit the oxygen, and she went under again. She didn't stop until she got far enough away from the school that no one could trace her back there, and transformed. No matter what, she knew Ladybug and Chat Noir would need some help.

Queen Bee leapt up on the roof. "Queenie checking in. What can I do to help?"

"Chat here. Bees aren't typical underwater creatures, so without something noteworthy, I'm not sure how much use any of us will be."

Queen Bee hummed. "Keep me posted."

"Will do."

Queen Bee didn't do a lot that day. Running across rooftops and saving random people from drowning was useful, but the Miraculous Ladybug eventually called and the underwater kingdom disappeared.

Later that day, she got a visitor.

"Marinette?" Chloe asked, staring at the girl in shock. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to give you some honey candies," Marinette said, shoving a bag into Chloe's hand and leaving down the hallway. Chloe opened it, finding seven separate bags of rather large honey candies with a list of powers corresponding to the colour of the honey candy.

"Pollen?" Chloe asked.

"It's for transforming. If I eat one of these, I'm going to get the powers associated with that colour-code."

Chloe skimmed over the list of powers. "What the fuck is void, then?"

~?~

"Void is complicated. If you're up against an akuma whose power is teleportation through time/space, you can use Void to follow him when he shifts," Plitt said. The rat's worm tail curled around Felix's cheese-holding hand.

"And all of the holders have transformation formulas like this?" Felix asked for confirmation, weighing the swiss cheese package.

"Yup."

Felix started doing a bit of calculations. "Alright, so we have to carry the transformation vials and/or foodstuffs, an exact fake copy of our miraculouses in active mode in case the akuma gets the drop on us, regular food for our kwamis, and the stuff we need for day-to-day like, like our phones, school work, home work, and other useless activities?"

"Got that right, little one."

"I'm gonna kill Hawkmoth when I find him," Felix sighed.

"Don't blame ya."

"And I'm gonna get a satchel. One designed by my dad so it look like a man's satchel, but it's really a purse."

"Okey-dokey."

"And I'll give it to Adrien. My trench coat is good enough for this stuff."

"That's torture, Cherie."

"Perfect."

~?~

Luka softly strummed his guitar, trying in vain to compose music. It was weird without another person to listen to.

The blue-haired boy set aside his guitar with a sigh. He looked to his left and did a double-take with a small gasp. Where... had that little box come from?

Luka went up to his dresser and poked the little box with red symbols. He very hesitantly opened it, and shut it with a yelp when it lit up. He waited. It didn't explode. Wasn't it supposed to explode when the pressure trigger dropped off? Luka opened it again just to get a look at it, since it maybe wasn't a bomb after all?

Hopefully.

Luka opened the box, only to find a soft green bracelet light up in a flash of light, swirling around him before it disappeared.

The little snake emerged from a ball of green light. "Hello," it said, "my name is Kayee, and I'll be your kwami."

Luka stared at it. "Hello, my name is Luka, and I'll be your... holder?"

Kayee smirked. "Oh, we're going to have lots of fun together."

Luka held up a hand for Kayee to land on. "I have so many questions. May I ask them?"

"You may," Kayee said, settling on Luka's outstretched hand.

"Thank you," Luka said. "So, what's a kwami? And what do kwamis do? And how were you a part of this bracelet?"

"A kwami is a little creature that embodies an aspect of existence. We're ess entially gods. We kwamis keep the natural balance and protect your world from threats, and many will transform to become superheroes. I was a part of your new bracelet because when I'm in inactive mode, I sleep inside my gem."

Luka blinked. And blinked again. And started. "HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT, THERE'S A GOD SITTING ON MY HAND!"

"Yes," Kayee said patiently. "I embody Second Chance, the concept of Second Chance, and deja vu."

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit." Luka took the bracelet out of his box with a certain amount of reverence, and slid it onto his wrist. "So... How do your powers work?"

"When we're transformed, you can pull back the head of the snake in order to reverse time and use your power of Second Chance. It generally gives you five minutes, but if you execute Reversal, I can go back as far as I want to."

"What's a Reversal?"

"It's when the kwami temporarily takes control of the Holder's body."

Luka nodded slowly. "Right, right, right. Reversals, reversals. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. And how do I make a Reversal happen?"

"Say 'Reversal' while you're already transformed."

"Mm-hmm. And how do I transform?"

"Say 'Scales Slither'."

Luka felt the words echo through his very being. "Scales Slither."

~?~

The whip at his side was functionally identical to Ladybug's yoyo, apparently. He laughed, swinging his way through the city.

He felt free.

 _This is such a sweet melody. One I've missed deeply._ Luka breathed in the fresh air in his lungs and took another swing.

Queen Bee joined him after a while, flagging him down, wrapping her spinning top around his waist and pulling him up on the roof where she stood.

Luka shook his head to get rid of the fuzziness. "Hi, Queen Bee. I'm Viperion. It's nice to meet you."

"Did your kwami explain everything?" Queenie said immediately.

"He explained enough. If there's more to know, I guess I'll find that out along the way."

"And the Guardian left the transformation food with you?" Queenie asked.

"What food?" Luka asked.

"Rainbow-coloured, maybe candy, maybe cookies, maybe cheese..."

"Well, there was a bag right next to my miraculous box, and that might've been it..."

"That would be it. Then obviously, you can be trusted. Welcome to the fight against Hawkmoth. I'll send you details for better hiding your miraculous, duplicate, and transformation vials later. For now, we have patrol." Queen Bee darted off to another rooftop, running across to get to the Eiffel Tower, their regular check-in point. She picked up her spinning top and hit one of the stripes, and didn't speak until she heard six little clicks. "Queen Bee, TIC. I'll be a little late for check-in, I found a new recruit. A regular ophidian with the snake-charmer miraculous. He'll do great."

"Good. Fill him in yet?" Chat's voice came through her speakers.

"Not everything. I'll send him the details after patrol," Queen Bee said.

"Right," Chat said. "Meetcha at le Tour d'Eiffel."

Queen Bee unfurled her wings and took off, leaving Viperion in the dust. Viperion smirked and threw his whip.

Queen Bee and Viperion raced to the monument, giggling and laughing. They landed, only to find the six other heroes were all already sitting and admiring the lights of the city as the sun set over the horizon, creating splashes of colour and a colder night.

"Mmm…" Viperion hummed. "My sister should be home by now. She'll get worried if I'm not there."

"Mm-hmm," Ladybug said. "We'll send the details later," she said nonchalantly, still staring at the explosion of colour across the sleeping sky.

Viperion darted off for the Couffaine houseboat and detransformed moments before he hit the deck. He walked below deck to his quarters, and slunk into his room without a single noise.

"What do you eat, Kayee?" Luka asked with a yawn, the hours finally catching up to him.

"Rats. I'll be able to hunt on my own," Kayee assured the teal-tipped boy.

"Cool," Luka yawned. "I'll be going to school tomorrow, so you can hunt within a fifty-kilometer radius of me, and you have to come back to me if there's an akuma. Okay?"

Kayee almost started at that. He'd never had such a liberal Holder before. "Okay."

Luka fell asleep faster than Kayee could blink.

Kayee landed on Luka's stomach (he'd learned a long time ago that sleeping in areas like the neck would not result in a happy holder) and curled up in a tight ball.

Luka's bracelet gently gleamed in the darkness of night hours. Kayee's heartsong rose and fell in rhythm with Luka's, and Kayee curled up with his favourite holder in centuries.

~?~

Juleka stretched when she woke up, and went into Luka' room to wake him up like every morning. There was a serious risk he wouldn't wake until after school ended if she didn't.

Seeing Luka with morning wood didn't equate to seeing Luka with a brand-new bracelet and a little lizard whose head was disproportionate from his body sleeping on his stomach.

She raised her pot and pan and banged them together with the same frequency with which was needed to wake her brother. His little lizard woke up too.

Luka blinked blearily at his sister. "Hey, Jules."

"Luka Alexander Couffaine, you have approximately three seconds to explain the bracelet that probably costs more than out house and the little lizard sleeping on your stomach," Juleka said.

Having no time to craft a reasonable lie, Luka said, "I'm the newest miraculous holder against Hawkmoth. My secret identity is paramount, and I need to keep my kwami safe, so please talk a bit quieter."

Juleka sat down on the bed, her face paler than a few moments before. "So you're fighting a terrorist's army. Look, I'm happy you think what Hawkmoth is doing is wrong and stupid and stupid and wrong," Juleka's eyes darkened at the reminder of her own actions as Reflekta, "but I'm really worried about you. Are you sure you're going to be okay?"

Luka's eyes softened, and he looked at his kwami. "Kayee, could you please go hunt? I'd like to speak with my sister alone."

Kayee could recognize and order when he saw one. He phased through the wall and went off.

Luka sat up once Sass was gone, and pet Juleka's head, pulling her in for a hug. The girl wrapped her own arms around Luka, shaking and quivering. She couldn't speak past the lump in her throat, and could barely breathe. She settled for closing her eyes and breathing in Luka's unique scent of cinnamon and vanilla, but her shaking only got harder when she smelled the phantom of iron and almost felt warm, smelly, sticky liquid on Luka's clothing.

Luka squeezed her tighter and pet her head, his new bracelet an interruption in the soft flesh on his wrist. Juleka's hands fisted in his clothing, convincing herself that she was imagining her brother's death.

"I know, I know," Luka said as Juleka clung to him with the desperation someone might cling to a lifeline with. He understood how she felt. If she were the one on the front lines instead of him, he would be just as worried. He combed his fingers through her hair, working through the knots. "I'm walking straight into a war involving magic for a wish that'll alter reality, clothed in magic spandex, fighting against villains who will stop at nothing to kill, destroy, enslave, capture, or create in order to rip this bracelet off of my wrist. I'm scared, more than I've been in my whole life. I never thought I'd be a soldier. But Hawkmoth will kill a lot of people to get that wish, and I don't want people to get killed when I could have stopped it, and I'll feel worse if I actually fall under Hawkmoth's control."

Juleka finally stuttered past the lump in her throat, eyes tearing. "I-I was-s on-e of-v-f his-" she gasped and made a pathetic little noise in the back of her throat, "Champi-" she hiccupped, "-pions." A tear fell down her cheek. "It w-was like I was in a c-age and I coul-dn't get ou-out." She took deep breaths to calm herself and spoke again when she wasn't tripping over her words. "Lulu, everyone has bad days. A lot of people are going to be ak-kumatized if he keeps going at the rate he's going at, and you might be one of them. If that happens, I think I'd want you to give me your miraculous, just to fight you until you're deakumatized."

Luka leaned back a bit and swept his thumb across Juleka's check, smiling. "I'll be okay. My kwami's teaching me techniques to avoid akumatization, and as long as I let out my anger in short bursts and in not a great amount of intensity, I'll be okay."

"But just in case!" Juleka said forcefully.

"Just in case, I'll have a failsafe," Luka said. "I'm going to give my miraculous to Sass, and then he'll find a temporary holder."

Juleka tackled him to the be in a hug. Luka smiled and didn't even try to shove her off, "Jules, I'm gonna be late for school!"

"Don't care," Juleka said petulantly. "My big brother's a magic soldier against a terrorist, and I'm gonna hug the stupid out of him until I feel better."

"Okay."

Luka shifted so Juleka was curled up against him and one of his arms was under her head, the other draped over her waist. Juleka cuddled closed to her brother, clinging to him like a magnet.

Neither went to school that day.

~?~

So, Rose ended up actually telling her parents about her being Patches. The brown bunny kwami had gone on a midnight snack binge and fell asleep in the fridge, atop three empty carrot bags that were full last night.

"So, yeah, I'm in a lot of danger, but Ladybug's charm will reverse anything that happens to me," Rose said, halfway into the school day. Her parents had both called in sick when they saw Hopps, and called the school with the same excuse. She fiddled with her purse as her father paced and her mother just _breathed_.

"How are we supposed to be okay with this?" Rose's mom asked, squeezing her daughter's hands like it was the only thing preventing her from getting herself killed.

"How are you supposed to be okay with Hawkmoth?" Rose riposted. "He's just going to get closer to winning if I quit."

"Then give your miraculous to someone else!" Rose's dad said angrily, finally taking a break from his pacing.

Hopps suddenly flew out of Rose's purse. "Okay, _no_ ," the sassy bunny said. "Like it or not, your daughter is the best choice for my Holder."

Rose's mom looked like she was going to throw up as Hopps went into intricate detail of why they couldn't be separated. Since Rose's hair was getting browner and she got more of a craving for lettuce and salads, giving her more a dirty-blond look, their permanent bonding had begun. It was identical to how Chat Noir was starting to adopt catlike mannerisms, and how Ladybug's hair had gotten to be about the same colour as a ladybug's spot, and how Queen Bee was starting to think about hives instead of the individual and got better and better at controlling-(no, that was a bad analogy, that was what Hawkmoth was doing)-manipulating-(worse word)-directing people, and Rena sometimes screamed when she saw a fit-for-mating person, and Carapace was starting to pull his hood up over his head when he got embarrassed, and Krysa hissed at people who annoyed him, and Ryuko would hoard shiny things, and-

"Yeah, we get it," Rose's dad snapped. "But why does it have to be teenagers? Ladybug's thirteen. Rose is the same age. They all look about the same age, if their heights are anything to go by. Why children?"

"Whoa! Hey, our Guardian knows a lot better than to give miraculouses to children! These itty-bitty ones are best people for the job!" Hopps exploded. "It's the ENERGIES! Age matters in this instance, and actually gets worse as they get older. In adolescence, their energies are the most manipulatable, so they adopt more positive qualities quicker, but they aren't children who'll get sidetracked by the nearest butterfly or talk our ears off about wanting to be a monarch. We've been doing this for millennia. We know what we're doing."

Rose's dad took a deep breath in and a deep breath out. "You'll keep Rose safe, yeah?"

"Dad, I can keep myself safe!" Rose screamed. "I'm the Holder here, I know what the limits of the miraculous are! I've been doing this for months, and Hopps is helping SO MUCH! I know you have objections to this, but there's nothing else we can do!"

Hopps sighed. "Rose, please go get your main sweater."

Rose nodded and went to get her coat. It was pretty, pink, went down to her butt, and bulky enough to hide the things she wanted hidden. There was a bunch of painstakingly-sewn invisible pockets on the inside, and she showed the inside to them. On one side was the power vials, all very carefully sewn to have their own little pocket and another for her list of powers. She opened her purse, and inside a jewelry box lay her active-miraculous duplicate, and her kwami food. She explained all of it. "I'm prepared. I've been prepared for a long time. I can take care of myself in this way, and I'm never going to stop until Hawkmoth's defeated. If that means I die, that's okay, because Ladybug will reverse the damage. I know you have a lot of reservations and questions about this, but I really am the best person for this job, and I really need to know I have your support, if nothing else."

Rose's dad sighed. "This is self-destructive, plain and fucking simple. But I know you're not going to give this up. You're a bullheaded as your mother." Rose's dad kissed her head. "I'll sign you up for a free self-defense class and you can come with me on parkour, and your mom'll teach you how to wield a knife. It'll be for an hour every second day, and push it back an hour when you have an akuma to take care of, or to the next day if it goes on into the night." He hugged Rose close to him. She hugged back. "That's the bare minimum, okay?"

"Yeah," Rose agreed.

Rose's mom joined in on the hug too. "I love you so much, my precious flower."

"I love you too, mom, and I love you too, dad."

"I love you more," Rose's dad said with a shit-eating grin.

Rose giggled. "No, I love you more!"

"I love you both more, end of story!" Rose's mom said.

~?~

Master Fu left a box outside Alya Cesaire's home in it contained her transformation vials. They were perfectly innocuous, and Trixx would know exactly what was going on. Even if her parents or sisters intercepted the vials and asked Alya what was going on, she knew what to say.

Grah. He was getting so OLD. He needed to find a new guardian who was already in the know. Someone who could find people the gems that matched their essences. The tortoise or the snake-charmer would be the best options. The tortoise had even gotten akumatized for someone else's sake, and the snake-charmer could LISTEN. But even the new tortoise was not exactly the best choice for Wayzz, and Wayzz had commented on it too. He matched more-

Master Fu returned to his home and opened the gramophone. The newly restored gem twinkled, stable for the first time in a long time.

-The peacock.

Fu picked up the gem and pinned it on his lapel. Duusu emerged immediately with a yawn. "What's going on?"

"How do you feel about a new Holder?"

~?~

"I'm home!" Nino yelled, stuck on a habit he couldn't break. He tore off his shoes and climbed the stairs to his bedroom, setting down his heavy bag and rubbing the base of his back. He picked up the discarded charging cable and plugged in his phone, stretching. He'd almost gone to sleep when he noticed a new addition to his dresser; a black box with red symbols and a bag filled with vials and fruit salad.

Nino opened the box, recognizing it as the one Ladybug gave him sometimes. He was shocked, though, at the peacock pin being present and not the turtle bracelet. Duusu emerged, and Nino just blinked. "What happened to Wayzz?"

"The Guardian's getting to the point where he can't survive for long without the bracelet, and even a few hours are getting worse and worse for his health. And you weren't exactly attuned to Wayzz like you are to me."

Nino took the pin out of its box. It wasn't the most inconspicuous thing in the world, after all, so it would need to be hidden. He ended up clipping it on one of his rubber bands and form-shifting it and the bracelet into a watch.

"You're wearing my pin wrong," Duusu said, unclipping his pin from his bracelet and pinning it to his shirt, camouflaging his pin with his shirt. "It works worse when it's not in relative proximity to an internal organ."

"How do you mean, 'attuned'?" Nino asked.

"I mean, the Turtle is shelter. Unmovable and unbreakable protection. The drawbridge between a fortress and an enemy army. The Peacock is sort of similar, but it's protection by distraction. I'm sort of a cross between a court jester and a knight."

Nino took off his cap, scratching his head. "Well, if we're using these old metaphors, what's a minstrel doing, taking the role of a knight?"

"Conscription," Duusu answered, "and nobility. You have the tools and training you need in me, and we're going to be okay so long as you trust me."

Nino took a deep breath, held it a few seconds, and let it out. "Okay." Nino got out a notepad. "Tell me everything you think I need to know."

~?~

It was finally Hero's Day. It had been a tradition for a long time, when Parisians would step up and do something important or noteworthy, beginning a long time ago in WW2 when the inhabitants of Paris overthrew the nazis and chased them out. Since then, the tradition had continued. Contributions to charities, the work to reduce climate change, saving endangered species, volunteer work, soup kitchens, festivals, parades, speeches, the list was as long as Marinette was tall.

The ravenette stretched her arms above her head and looked out the window. The parade was passing by her house already. She hid in her closet, transformed, and made it outside without anyone seeing her. From there, she swung onto her balcony and smirked, jumping on her giant balloon and sitting down, meditating with a smile, barely visible if you didn't SEE and LOOK, which was rare without a Miraculous, and usually only happened to those Worthy.

She heard three thumps behind her. "Hey, bug," Chat said with a warm smile. Ladybug felt butterflies fluttering in her stomach as he sat down beside her. Viperion and Ryuko sat beside the duo. Viperion manipulated all their limbs to make sure they were all cuddling with each other, and they lay back and enjoyed the roucous parade in honor of the miraculous bearers, warm.

Alya snapped a picture when their parade passed her bedroom window. She didn't offer any theories and let the fans concoct them on their own, like she did with any picture she posted. She generally had a system that worked pretty well. She would record the akuma battle from her phone and relocate whenever they had to, and just cut out any bits involving Rena Rouge and her cell phone. Her fans concocted theories all on their own. Her job was organising the things into folders.

There was one for heroes and a separate section on all of them. There was another for fan art, one for fan comics, speculations about why hawkmoth wanted the miraculouses so much, where they came from, and some more stuff. Alya had contacted the heroes through Rena Rouge and gave them all special accounts and passwords for those accounts where their words would always be bolded and underlined, the border being the symbol for their miraculous. Rena posted the least frequently out of everyone, and Krysa only posted once, but after that, it had been a few messages each.

Ladybug got a notification on her yoyo. She smiled at the photo of her, Viperion, Chat Noir, and Ryuko.

"So, how're we gonna explain this away?" Ladybug asked.

"We could tell everyone we're dating," Viperion suggested. "Just as a prank."

Ryuko wrapped an arm around Chat's and Viperion's shoulders. "Quite right. I've heard great things about practical jokes. After this, let's get some juice with lots of froofy sugar and whipped cream! … I think I'm thinking about hot chocolate. But that's okay, because I love hot chocolate, too!"

"Where to?" Chat giggled.

"The closest to wherever this parade float stops?" Ryuko suggested.

"Sounds like a date," Ladybug smiled.

Their festivities were brought to a close, though, by an akuma. The new pretend quadruple jumped up and stood to attention. There was screaming from all over as an illusion of an akumatized Ladybug used Chat Noir's cataclysm against him. Viperion and Ryuko darted after Ladybug's fake, while Ladybug and Chat Noir layed low. They didn't know what was going on, and until they could formulate a strategy, everyone thought he was dead and Ladybug, akumatized. Obviously, an akuma was in the works, but they needed to know more before going on the attack.

Ryuko picked up her sword and pulled out the handle, opening it like a flip-phone. Ladybug's yoyo and Chat's baton rang; they both picked up to listen in on the conversation. King Monkey, Patches, Krysa, Queen Bee, Rena Rouge, Viperion, the new tortoise who called himself Celadon, and the Peacock Holder who introduced himself as Chrysocolla.

"Yeah, that's too long a name," Queen Bee said.

"Okay, then I'm Sodalite."

"Sure thing, Pepsi."

"For get it, call me-"

"Akuma," Ryuko interrupted, jumping over rooftops, her sheathe bouncing against her hip. "Likely an illusionary. Viperion and I are en route. Stay alert." She hung up and clicked her handle back on her sword.

The other superheroes stayed on the line. "Queenie. Orders?"

Queen Bee snapped out of her reverie. "Rendezvous at the Louvre pyramid. What'll you guys be doing, Bug?"

"Laying low," Ladybug answered. "They've turned public favour against me and they think Chat's dead. If I show up, I'll get mobbed, and if Chat shows up, they'll think he's an akumatized fan." Hundreds of black and purple butterflies flew overhead. She threw her yoyo and plucked butterflies out of the sky, one by one. "We need to prepare for the storm. Be on alert."

Everyone previously akumatized save the Holders got reakumatized. The butterflies landed on everyone in sight they could Feel with absurd clarity, their outfits same as ever, the butterfly masks frighteningly clear on their faces.

Hundreds more were falling prey to the evil butterflies as Dark Aphrodite, a jilted lover, shot people with her black roses. Ladybug clenched her fists and started purifying the butterflies that came near her. Nearly everyone on the street that had personally seen Charlatan Noir be killed were akumae, rampaging and raging down the streets of Paris.

Chat's teeth clenched.

~?~

Hawkmoth went out of his lair for the first time in a long time. He moaned at the sunlight. Catalyst was working wonderfully in accordance with his plans. The gentle whisper of his powers working with him led him to the Eiffel Tower, a meeting place for his akumae. He sat down and created as many butterflies as he needed. His powers divided and conquered the city, many wreaked with sorrow over the two longest miraculous team leaders being out of commission.

They were tough akumas, too. None of them were quite aware of the extent of their powers, but working in a unit broadened their horizons. Ladybug watched in horror as hundreds of different akumae stalked through the streets, using their powers without care.

Other Parisians were stepping up in favour of the heroes that were left. Firefighters fought Furnace Flare, regular people climbed in discarded cars and distracted Gigantitan, helicopter pilots distracted Gorilla, Darkblade fought against very talented fencers on par with Kagami and Adrien. Copycat was a somewhat noble villain and refused to Cataclysm civilians, so fighting against them when they were armed with torches and flamethrowers made him simply trip them up and continue on his way. But it got worse when the enslaving akumae took them. Pharaoh took control of his mummies again, Darkblade was knighting people left and right, and Dark Aphrodite made people INVITE the akumas.

She'd seen the akuma support groups. She attended them as Ladybug in a show that whatever happened when those people were akumatized could not be more over and that no matter what happened, she would always save them alongside her team. Ladybug's teeth clenched, and her pigtails shivered. If only. Since Hawkmoth had found a way to make more akumas than ever, all at once.

This was mass attack. Not just a single grenade.

 _"This is just to trigger the pack of thermals under the gym. THOSE are bombs. People are going to see the ashes of Westerberg High School, and think 'There's a school that self-destructed, not because society doesn't care, but because that school WAS society!'"_

Ladybug shivered. Her wings twitched. She hadn't noticed how similar JD and Hawkmoth had been before now.

Ladybug's head shook. This was not the time to be th-

She gasped as light filled her very being. A gentle purple mask fell over her eyes.

 _"Ladybug, my name is Phoenix. I'm the wielder of the Peacock kwami. You're trapped in a corner, plagued by your despair. Let me help you."_

Ladybug sighed. An explosion of red light formed a giant ladybug, fourteen black dots marking its flank. Ladybug jumped up on it and it flew off, up over the city. Ladybug controlled the Sentimonster through her earrings, shaping and moulding it to fit her desires.

Phoenix stretched the limits of his powers as long as he could, but nothing helped. After seven minutes, his suit was uncomfortable to keep on, and he said his detransformation sequence. Nino stood in his place. He sighed. "Come on, Duusu. Let's get you some food. We can't keep our teammates waiting. They said they were going to the Louvre, so..."

Ladybug fell, but drew her yoyo and swung all the way to the Louvre, where the other heroes were waiting. Chat pole-vaulted alongside her.

Phoenix flew there with his fans.

Once they were all in the same place, Ladybug started talking.

"Phoenix, how well-acquainted are you with your powers?" she asked.

Phoenix scratched the back of his head. "I only just got my miraculous a few days ago. Duusu's been explaining some stuff."

"Right," Chat said. "I know the former Holder, I can put you in touch. He can explain some stuff from the human side of things."

"In the meantime, you should stick with one of us," Queen Bee said. "You can help, but your powers are very obviously an advantage we should be exploiting. I assume you can only make one Sentimonster at a time?"

"Yeah," Phoenix said. "This would be so much easier if we had the Butterfly. Nooroo can boost powers. We could just-"

"We can't waste time thinking about what we could be doing," Viperion growled. "There isn't a second chance here. I'm going to activate Second Chance when we get within reach of Hawkmoth, and then that's it. I'm willing to spend centuries on this single battle. But there isn't time to be doing anything other than fighting and concentrating on bringing him down."

Patches took a deep breath in. "Queen Bee, how many honey stingers can you use consecutively?"

"The yellow honey isn't like Ladybug's Lucky Charm. Think of it more like her swinging her yoyo. The purple honey's five times, and then I detransform. I can paralyse Hawkmoth with the purple honey, too. But thee are a lot of akumas out there," Queen Bee looked out into the smoking, cindering city that was slowly being demolished by her family, her classmates, her staff, her friends, and way more. People overcome by despair. "I don't know how many of them I can fight consecutively, or even some I can't fight at all."

Chat hummed. "Style Queen is a hard one to beat. She'll be able to dodge almost anything. King Monkey?"

"I can disrupt my own powers and make it so I can disrupt other people's powers with more frequency, or with more than just the squeaker," King Monkey offered, "but there's a few akumas out there who constantly Shifts abilities, patterns, cognition, and other subsets. My powers won't work on them."

"Reset," Pegasus recalled, "Undergrowth, and Ghost-Writer. The one who got mad at Netflix and got the phone as the akuma object, the florist with a hankering to turn every flower against people, and the author who was mad at the publisher's. Reality-bending abilities."

"They're the ones we've got to watch out for," Kyrsa said. "But the greatest weaknesses are the ones that imitate us or can control us. Antibug, Copycat, Miss Fortune, Chat Blanc, Queen Wasp, White Rabbit, Piper, Puppeteer, Delphi, Bunny Blanche, and Firefly."

"Not to mention Dark Aphrodite," Ryuko added. "She's been shooting people with her hate/anger arrows."

"Then we're all at risk," Rena said. "If we get shot, we're going to be joining the army. As _akumatized miraculous holders_."

"Who know our own powers all too well," Celadon said. "Well, me and Phoenix don't all that well. But you guys have been doing this for months. You guys know your powers better than the inside of your pockets."

Chat moaned. "This getting to be such a fuck-up. The Butterfly's so powerful."

Ladybug scooted closer to Chat and wrapped a wing around him. "Chat, we're the most powerful Holders in existence in creation and destruction. We have a team filled with other Holders. Subjugation, protection, illusion, disruption, teleportation, time-bending, the earth, the sky, the plague, and knights!"

"Yeah, but against Army?" Chat asked rhetorically. "Hawkmoth can do all of that and more, and he can do it all at once."

"It'll be okay," Ryuko said. "We've defeated a lot of these akumae before. We can do it again."

"The endgame is Hawkmoth, through," Viperion pointed out. He's the one making all of this happen."

"There are a few thing we can do about it," Patches said. "We can kill him, steal his Gem, or destroy the thing that's made it so he can make so many akumas."

"Stealing his gem sounds like the easiest solution," King Monkey said. "It wouldn't be the first time an A/O is out of contact with an akuma, like Dark Owl."

They all shuddered at the reminder. They'd all been forced to give up their gem replacements, and so they made new copies, which they still always carried with them.

Ladybug took in a deep breath and let it out. "Okay. Divide and conquer, groups of two, six groups. Dark Aphrodite is the priority right now - she's making too many akumas for us to deal with. Queen Bee, take care of her with your partner." Queen Bee took Rena by the arm and dragged her off. "The rest of you, pick a partner and go crazy."

So they all scattered. Ladybug took Chat Noir with her and they ran into the battlefield.

Towards the Eiffel Tower.

 **2019-October-sixth.**

 **Final Word Count: 8,482**


End file.
